Last week, I spoke at EuroPCom, the European Union’s annual gathering of public communicators. I was asked to speak about trust. So I did. But not the kind written into branding manuals or delivered through polished messaging. I spoke about the kind that is broken. And why.

I’ve spent the last ten years bringing people together across borders to confront the biggest threats of our time. Climate breakdown. Wars. Inequality. Artificial intelligence.

First by co-founding a pan-European political party, Volt. Now by building a global one, Atlas. Through years of work, trying to find common tools, languages, timezones, cultural references, I have gained an increased trust in people, in communities, that I have lost in institutions and tech companies.

Politics is hard enough, so why make it transnational? Because people, everywhere, want the same things. Ask anyone what they care about and they’ll tell you: affordable life, safety, health, dignity. They’ll speak about a future worth living in.

And often, these basic needs are ignored. That’s why we started building those movements. Because the institutions meant to deliver on this promise weren’t doing it, not well enough, and not for all. So citizens have to take matters into their own hands.

I believe that most change comes from people. From communities that come together to challenge the status quo. Think of the suffragist movement, the anti-apartheid struggle, anti-colonial revolutions. They took decades, sometimes longer, but wrongs are made right, always, at the end, when people rise up.

The same will happen with the climate crisis. The same will happen with Palestinian liberation. Communities are acting. The public debate is shifting. Yet, institutions and companies too often fail.

So it’s no surprise that people have lost faith. And for good reason. They don’t trust governments or institutions. Not when they say one thing and do another.

The European Union stands by Ukraine, rightfully so. But it took six months and over thirty thousand Palestinian deaths to call not even for a ceasefire, but a humanitarian pause. It remains Israel’s top trading partner. All this while its own citizens take to the streets by the millions demanding action.

This is not just a failure of leadership, governance and fundamental values. It is a failure of trust.

But I consider people and communities to be the conscience of the world. The planetary moral compass. Many risk their lives, livelihoods, reputations and more to stand by what is right. It is not that I trust them blindly. It is that I have faith in the future because of them.

Over the last ten years, I have been told more times than I can count: your generation doesn’t care. But democracy is not just about casting a ballot every five years. It is about civic and political participation in everyday life. And that is what people across the world are doing. I see it every day. Communities today are connecting across borders. Not just across Europe, but globally. They are forming alliances on climate, on justice, on freedom. That is where trust lives. Not in empty rhetoric, but in shared struggle.

People cannot be expected to participate in rigged institutions they do not trust and on platforms owned by a handful of oligarchs. The myth is that people do not care. The truth is that they do. But the system is not built to hear them.

The European Union often seems like a distant ivory tower where some grey-suited, robot-like officials push papers around. It kind of is. But it is also deeply human. It is the nurse crossing borders to care for patients in need. It is the climate scientist using EU research grants to fight for our planet’s future. It is the activist invoking EU law to defend their rights, the student building a new life through Erasmus, the humanitarian worker coordinating relief after disaster strikes. The European Union is not just policy and process. It is people, millions of them, coming together so that dignity, peace and justice do not stop at borders.

Trust cannot be manufactured. It is not the product of messaging, branding or carefully worded press releases. It is earned through action, through accountability, through the courage to listen and to change. To demand forgiveness when wrong, like on Gaza, where the European Union is complicit in genocide. It is earned when institutions stop trying to manage communities and start following their lead. Trust does not trickle down from power. It rises from people.