Public trust is often described as an attitude governments should improve through better messaging. That diagnosis is incomplete. Trust is produced by institutional performance: whether decisions are understandable, services dependable, rules applied consistently, and citizens able to influence public choices. When those expectations fail, hostile narratives gain a receptive environment even when audiences do not trust the hostile source itself.
The European Centre for Democratic Resilience began work on 24 February 2026 with Romania among its participating member states and a role for candidate countries and independent stakeholders. Its design is revealing: the Centre combines early warning, operational coordination, civil-society expertise, and institutional preparedness. That is a more credible model than treating distrust as a communications defect to be corrected after a crisis begins.
Key takeaways
- Trust is an outcome of institutional behaviour, not simply a communications asset.
- The EU’s new resilience architecture connects threat detection with civil society and institutions.
- Resilience policy should measure responsiveness, participation, and procedural fairness.
Why distrust becomes a security concern
Low trust does not automatically make citizens disloyal or susceptible to every false claim. Democratic scepticism can be healthy. Vulnerability emerges when repeated institutional failure makes any official account appear self-serving, while alternative explanations gain credibility simply because they oppose the state.
Influence operations exploit this asymmetry. They do not need audiences to embrace a foreign actor. They need domestic institutions to be distrusted enough that uncertainty becomes politically paralysing. The intended effect may be withdrawal, cynicism, or hostility rather than conversion to a specific position.
“The relevant security question is not whether citizens trust government, but whether institutions make informed trust possible.”
Coordination cannot substitute for trustworthiness
The Centre’s first technical meeting in January and its launch in February 2026 reflect a real need for shared situational awareness. Yet coordination among institutions will have limited public value if it is not paired with evidence, clear mandates, independent participation, and review. A resilience mechanism must be able to distinguish foreign coordination from legitimate criticism and explain that distinction publicly.
A credible approach links communication to verifiable process: publish evidence behind decisions, acknowledge uncertainty, clarify responsibility, report implementation failures, and show how public feedback changed an outcome. Trust grows when institutions make themselves assessable, not when they ask to be trusted in advance.
From trust campaigns to measurable performance
Romania, Ukraine, and Moldova face different institutional constraints, but the same principle applies: resilience should focus on whether institutions deserve confidence. This includes accessible services, independent oversight, fair procurement, reliable local administration, protected civic space, and communications that do not conceal uncertainty.
Policy evaluation should look beyond headline polling. Complaint-resolution times, participation by under-represented groups, access to public information, and consistency of service delivery reveal where distrust is produced. The aim is not unconditional faith in government. It is an environment where institutional claims can be checked and where correction leads to visible improvement.
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Mara Ionescu
Research ContributorInformation resilience, foreign influence narratives, and regional security in Romania, Ukraine, and the Republic of Moldova.
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