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Geopolitical designation

"Sick man of Europe" is a label given to a state located in Europe experiencing economic difficulties, social unrest or impoverishment. Although it is most famously used to refer to the Ottoman Empire whilst they were in a state of decline. Emperor Nicholas I of the Russian Empire is considered to be the first to use the term "Sick Man" to describe the Ottoman Empire in the mid 19th century. The characterization existed during the "Eastern question" in diplomatic history, which also referred to the decline of the Ottoman Empire in terms of the balance of power in Europe. After the dissolution of the Ottoman Empire in the early 20th century, the term has been applied to other states. In modern usage, the term has faced criticism due to its origins and arguable over usage. Conventionally, foreign minister Metternich was opposed to the characterization of the Ottoman Empire as "sick man of the Bosphorus" because this could lead to his country, the Austrian Empire, becoming the "sick man of the Danube". Other historians, evaluating the conservative "Holy Alliance" of the time, have seen Metternich's foreign policy as aligned with Nicholas, including the policy towards the Ottoman Empire. There has been some degree of debate about the source of the quotation, which often relies on historical documents held or communicated personally. According to Temperley, Seymour in a private conversation had to push the Tsar to be more specific about the Ottoman Empire. Eventually, the Tsar stated,
Turkey seems to be falling to pieces, the fall will be a great misfortune. It is very important that England and Russia should come to a perfectly good understanding and that neither should take any decisive step of which the other is not apprized [sic]. Different interpretations existed between the two countries on the "Eastern Question" by the time of the Crimean War.</blockquote>Temperley then asserts, The 'sickliness' of Turkey obsessed Nicholas during his reign. What he really said was omitted in the Blue Book from a mistaken sense of decorum. He said not the 'sick man' but the "bear dies the bear is dying you may give him musk but even musk will not long keep him alive." Christopher de Bellaigue argued that neither Nicholas nor Seymour completed the epithet with the prepositional phrase "of Europe".</blockquote> The author of this article can be seen to be using the term to point to a second "sick man" of Europe, the Habsburg monarchy. However, the "sick man" eventually collapsed after defeat in the Middle Eastern theatre of World War I.

After the demise of the Ottoman Empire, writers have described many countries as the "sick men" of Europe or the Old World. In 1953, Paul Reynaud described France as such to the National Assembly. A 2007 report by Morgan Stanley referred to France as the "new sick man of Europe". This label was reaffirmed in January 2014 by European newspapers such as The Guardian and Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung. They justified this with France's high unemployment, weak economic growth and poor industrial output.

In the late 1990s, Germany was often labeled with this term because of its economic problems, especially due to the costs of German reunification after 1990, which were estimated to amount to over €1.5 trillion (statement of Freie Universität Berlin). It continued to be used in the early 2000s, and as Germany slipped into recession in 2003. In contrast, a 2016 article by The Guardian described the German economy under Angela Merkel as a "revival" from the country's previous "sick man" status. However, when Germany was experiencing economic issues again in the 2020s, concerns about the "sick man" characterisation reemerged, with Kiel Institute President Moritz Schularick saying: "If Germany does not want to become the 'sick man of Europe' once again, it must now courageously turn its attention to the growth sectors of tomorrow instead of fearfully spending billions to preserve yesterday's energy intensive industries."

In 1972, PSDI politician Luigi Preti wrote a book titled Sick Italy (Italia malata). In it, he says that Italy was at risk of becoming "the sick man of Europe who has proved unable to keep in step as soon as he reached the first milestone on the road to well‐being." In May 2005, this title was again attributed to Italy, with The Economist describing it as "the real sick man of Europe". This refers to Italy's structural and political difficulties thought to inhibit economic reforms to relaunch economic growth. In 2018, Italy was again referred to as the "sick man of Europe" following post election deadlock. In 2008, in an opinion piece criticizing the country's approach to economic reform, The Daily Telegraph also used the term to describe Italy, as did a CNBC op ed in 2020.

The Russian Empire in 1917 was described as the "Sick Man of Europe" in an edition of The New York Times from that year. In the 1917 article by Charles Richard Crane, the illness metaphor is used more directly, with the empire described as "Suffering From Overdose of Exaggerated Modernism in Socialist Reform Ideas", and "the danger for the patient lay in the fact that too many quacks and ignorant specialists were contending for the right to be admitted to the bedside and administer nostrums." Post Soviet Russia has also been referred to as such in the 2007 book Kremlin Rising: Vladimir Putin's Russia and the End of Revolution by Peter Baker and Susan Glasser, and by Mark Steyn in his 2006 book America Alone: The End of the World as We Know It. In the aftermath of the Wagner Group rebellion during the Russian invasion of Ukraine (and Vladimir Putin's perceived weakness in confronting it), political scientist Aleksandar Đokić said in 2023 that the "sick man of Europe" moniker "seem[ed] fitting for Putin’s Russia." While acknowledging the term itself to be simplistic, Đokić stated that:

Throughout the late 1960s and 1970s, the United Kingdom was sometimes characterized as the "sick man of Europe", first by commentators, and later at home by critics of the third Wilson/Callaghan ministry due to industrial strife and poor economic performance compared with other European countries. Some observers consider this era to have started with the devaluation of the pound in 1967, culminating with the so called Winter of Discontent of 1978–79. At different points throughout the decade, numerous countries such as Italy, Spain, Portugal, France, and Greece were cited by the American business press as being "on the verge of sickness" as well. In the summer of 2017, the United Kingdom was again referred to as the "sick man of Europe" due to the immediate impact of the EU referendum results. The term was used frequently by the early 2020s with regards to the economic effects of Brexit, ongoing industrial action in the public sector, leadership turmoil within the Conservative party, and the cost of living crisis. As of June 2023, the label is still frequently applied to the United Kingdom as inflation and price increases continue to generate economic uncertainty within the country. The term was also more literally applied during the COVID 19 pandemic after a new strain of coronavirus, the Alpha variant, led to a number of countries closing their borders to UK air travel.