The grass is always greener… until you realize it’s burning

Remember when Europe was supposed to be the fairy tale promised land for American liberals? When President Donald Trump won in 2024, a certain class of American announced they were packing their bags for the continent’s gentler, wiser, more “civilized” shores. Celebrities declared America unlivable. Online threads filled with advice on digital nomad visas, and Americans applied for foreign citizenship in record numbers.Well, the reviews are in, and apparently the trains aren’t cheap, the healthcare isn’t all free, and the locals aren’t exactly rolling out the welcome mat. Now, many of those Americans are quietly plotting their way back home.It turns out the European “dream life” brochure left a few things out. Start with healthcare, since that was the big selling point. It’s “free” only if you ignore some of the highest tax burdens in the developed world and the waiting lists that come with it. Plenty of Americans who moved abroad dreaming of “Medicare for all” are learning that when the government is the only payer and private health insurance is eliminated, you get the care it decides to give you, on the schedule it decides to give it. Ask the French how long they waited to see the doctor they wanted, or how long it took to get a procedure that couldn’t wait. Too often, the answer is months, sometimes years. It’s the same nonsense behind the Democrats’ “Medicare for all” push here at home: It’s “free” until you’re the taxpayer footing the bill.This election cycle, Democratic candidates are starting to fold government-run healthcare back into their policy priorities on the campaign trail, but we’ve already had a preview. After Obamacare, plenty of physicians stopped taking patients unless they paid privately. Government healthcare isn’t free healthcare. It’s lousy healthcare for anyone who can’t afford to buy their way out.Then there’s the people. We were told Europeans were more worldly and more tolerant than those provincial Americans back home. But many of the Americans who made the move say they’ve been met with eye-rolling and mockery of their accents and their culture, sometimes in their own offices. It turns out the continent that lectures us about tolerance has a limit when the person in front of it is American.The free speech restrictions sting hard. Many American liberals report leaving the U.S. because they feared what a second Trump term “meant for their rights.” They landed in countries where Brussels decides what counts as “harmful” content and where the Digital Services Act turns every platform into a speech enforcer. In places such as Britain and Germany, people have had the police show up at their door over a social media post. Maybe that’s why so many of those who now miss home are willing to say so only anonymously.And if all that weren’t enough, now France is on fire. This month, nationwide protests turned into the country’s worst rioting in years. Cars were torched, shops looted, and public buildings stormed. In Limoges, a city hall that had stood since 1883 was gutted by fire. Anti-terror police were called in, and the man arrested is allegedly tied to ultra-left movements. The French government itself says radical groups organized the violence. More than 2,400 people were arrested, and Paris and other major cities are now under curfew. This is what happens when a government lets radical groups operate in its cities and lets migration outpace integration for years, until the social fabric frays.Even the politics aren’t what these Americans were sold. Liberals who moved abroad can’t escape commonsense conservative policies because Europeans are fed up with the consequences of an unchecked liberal agenda. Greece, Poland, and Portugal have right-leaning governments cracking down on immigration. Right-leaning parties are surging in Britain and Germany. In France, Marine Le Pen, the “far-right” candidate the media swore never had a chance, is now the front-runner for president. The “progressive utopia” they were promised doesn’t exist because European voters are rejecting it.FROM FAROES TO FLANDERS: WASHINGTON’S CASE FOR ENGAGING EUROPE’S PRO-WESTERN INDEPENDENCE MOVEMENTSThis is a chance to learn from their mistakes. Brussels is still selling the European model as the future: government-run healthcare that eliminates private insurance, anti-free speech rules like the Digital Services Act, and unchecked migration that has Paris under curfew. If the people who bought the European dream life brochure are heading home, the product doesn’t match the marketing.Before the Democratic Party doubles down on the European Union’s agenda this election cycle, we should look at the real-world impacts of these policies.Matt Mowers is a senior adviser at the EU-US Forum and a former Trump State Department official.