Have much respect for European power, we hear (6)
I believe the answer is:
esteem
'hear' is the definition.
The answer and definition can be both related to thinking as well as being verbs in their base form.
Maybe you can see an association between them that I can't see?
'have much respect for european power we' is the wordplay.
I cannot really see how this works, but
'respect' could be 'steem' (I've seen this before) and 'steem' is found within the answer.
'european' could be 'e' (abbreviation e.g. EU) and 'e' is located in the answer.
This accounts for all the letters.
This explanation may well be incorrect...
(Other definitions for esteem that I've seen before include "judge" , "Value highly" , "credit" , "'Regard, respect (6)'" , "Rate highly" .)