A Belgian historian has claimed that a civil war will erupt in Europe within the next three decades, drawing an analogy between the continent and the fall of the Roman Empire.

“In 20 to 30 years Europe will have become an authoritarian or imperial state, after a phase resembling civil war and decay,” David Engels, a historian at the Free University of Brussels, said in a published report on Saturday.

“I expect a civil war, which will force a fundamental social and political reformation in Europe, whether we like it or not, following the example of the decaying Roman Republic in the first century BC,” he said in remarks published by the British tabloid newspaper The Daily Express. 

Elaborating on his alarming prediction, Engels noted that the parallels between the European Union and Julius Caesar’s equivalent are “so massive, so obvious and that has been the case for decades.”

The 37-year-old historian claimed that the factors which led to the destruction of the Roman Republic are present in Europe today, including family decay, individualism, the decline of traditional culture, globalization, fundamentalism, and rampant crime.

Pointing to the refugee crisis in Europe, Engels said, “The present population movements are only one of the many symptoms of our present spirit, characterized by a strange mixture of cosmopolitanism, self-doubt, calculus, materialism, and bad conscience.”

According to the top historian, the European civil war cannot be avoided, however, it will be unlikely to look like a traditional military conflict because European societies are not militarized.

In a similar prediction made last year, French academic and Islamic expert Gilles Kepel also said that the rise of terrorism and extremists in Europe could plunge the continent into a large-scale civil conflict.