In 2025 Europe looks quite different than it did in 2020, though not irrevocably so. As the economic crisis of 2020 raged over Europe, it was not the place it influenced most. With oil prices collapsing, it left many petrostates in the Middle East without means to support their soceities, and soon people took to the streets the cries for democracy and better life. As the area generally devolved into a civil war, new powers came to be. Kurdistan, initially active in the south, swept through kurdish lands of Turkey as it, too, fell apart after a nutjob killed their president. In Turkey, the government accuses practically everybody of an attempted coup, while rebels rose up when the crack down turned violent, and local governors in former Adana and Pontus try to keep peace de-facto defying the government, though paying fealty de-ure. To the south, Islamic Caliphate rages war against everybody, while trying to reconstruct "the great society of old", romanticizing the age of Islamic conquests against infidels. The "moderate" rebels were quickly radicalized and joined the Caliphate, or were eliminated due to lack of popular support. Iran is trying to set up a regime in south Iraq to act as a buffer, but persistent terrorism and local resistance makes it look worthless. And with the Saudi King breaking 90 years the prospects are not looking good for them either.
With chaos in middle east millions of people are moving towards Europe, and it finally exposed the growing differences between France&Germany and Poland&Ukraine, the later massing up a huge following across Eastern Europe, with issues from ranging immigration to the measure of Brussels involvement in local economies. Effectively having half of EU Council on its side, the Visegrad Group managed to stop most of european legislature, and this crisis remains unsolved as of 2025.
Due to massive economic contraction a number of independence movements rose up from calls for another referendum in Quebec to Scotland nationalists, Italian Lega Nord and Yugoslavian secessionists.
As economy is collapsing in the north as well as in the south, from Greece and South Italy to Norway and Iceland, only the "central" or "middle" Europe from France to Ukraine is left to pick up the bill.
Things are not looking as grimm in Siberia though, as China, perhaps the only country with economy not to dip in the negatives, is just beyond the border and a continuous immigration from the western neighbours, there still is push to establish a single market in the Commonwealth, to let people freely move in and combine the economies in this uncertain times.
