I know next to zero to what is going on exactly right now, but it feels as if the trends are accelerating in Europe towards something rather unbecoming. The ****show that Turkey is, the shenanigans surrounding the refugee crisis, ISIS *still* lingering on (and like a bad infection, threatening the life of an entire limb of a continent), all the crescendo around terrorist attacks.
I wouldn't really disagree about the mood of Europe and what's in the air, but on the other hand, of all these things, the only one one that seems likely to result in a serious, permanent change is Turkey. And I don't think the Turkey thing has its genesis near the others either. Edrogan et. al. wouldn't stop seeking supreme power if they didn't have a civil war on their doorstep or if ISIS went away.
ISIS and their side effects have been going on for awhile; one of the reasons ISIS switched to attacking Europe was that they were losing ground in the Middle East. I doubt they'll ever have a moment where Satan comes to Jesus as did the IRA, so there will never be a clean end to the ISIS campaign. (If you can even call what happened to the IRA a clean end, considering.)They'll lose their territory and linger on as a more traditional terror group, tapping the apocalyptic mindset al-Qaeda wouldn't touch.
Then again it's not like al-Qaeda never advocated lone-wolf attacks. ISIS had a legitimacy, for want of a better term, they didn't, because they put a flag on the map and actually started accomplishing things against state actors for awhile. I guess the real question is, once that's taken from them, will it make things change in Europe? I'm hopeful but can't swear to anything.
I can't think of any especially appropriate parallels for Europe and the refugee problem at the moment. (It's not like a minority Muslim population in Europe is exactly
new, France, Belgium, and Germany have had a noticeable minority for at least a decade.) The best fit, I think, would probably be...well. I'm not sure it's really a best fit, but see the last paragraph for why I feel like it does. The late '80s and early '90s, the US, gang violence, only focused outward rather than mainly in. Disenfranchised minority. Hated and feared. The cure for that was better policing on the one hand and the '90s economic boom on the other. (Mainly the economy, since it actually enabled the improved policing too.)
I suppose the former is possible; the French police seem to have some hangups about proper information-sharing, the Belgians have done a piss-poor job keeping an eye on their radicals, other areas of improvement doubtless exist. You can always get better. But the economic improvement...Europe's economy is technically on an upslope at the moment, but nothing like America in the early '90s.
As a personal aside, I admit a level of dark amusement as an American, watching Continental Europe, which has scolded us for so long about how much better they're integrated with their minorities, encounter a large group of brown people and completely lose their minds. A lot of the rhetoric you see get tossed around by people complaining about their new neighbors is very familiar in tone to that attacking African-Americans via the language of law and order from '70s onwards. But some of it is also straight Jim Crow-era nonsense, like banning hijabs. An attempt to force external conformity won't make them French in their hearts. Just piss them off.