Jean-Dominique Giuliani: 2022 : An opportune time for an active revival

The European Union is making progress with every crisis. Faced with the virus, it was able to take action on both the health and economic fronts. Not for a very long time has the spirit of cooperation between Member States produced tangible results so quickly. The vaccines are there and are also being exported to other countries that need them. The massive support for the economy is having an effect and is prompting a rethink of the Union's economic governance. The European Central Bank has once again demonstrated its role as Europeans' shield and protector by making it possible to replenish financial circuits under pressure.

The Union must build on this responsiveness to continue its transformation.

It faces two major, perhaps even fundamental, challenges: its prosperity and its security. It must adopt operating rules for its economy that can handle the challenges of digital and environmental transformation. It can harness significant resources by pooling the use of markets to invest in the future. It should not be afraid of common debt when it comes to investing and thus moving towards a new economy. It has not been slow to identify its needs; it must now agree to review its principles of economic governance.

Its security is now threatened by revisionist powers at its borders: powers that are not able to compete with its economic success and that will consequently seek any pretext to upset, destabilise and thereby fight it. Armed with their pacifist principles, Europeans must learn to prepare for war so that they do not have to wage it. To win the war before it starts requires showing great determination to achieve genuine independence of thought and action.

If Europeans collectively meet these two imperatives, they will herald a new era of European integration.

The quiet power of a European Union united in meeting the challenges it faces is the best means of promoting its model of freedom and solidarity. In solidarity with each of its members and developing solidarity among all categories of Europeans, the Union is the torch-bearer of a model society, which places humans at the centre of all social organisation. It must be proud of this, and accept the role in the face of new autocratic adversaries who challenge it.

To do this, it must not be afraid of demonstrating power or creative imagination in economic matters. And it must be bold. Then the future will smile upon it.

Jean-Dominique Giuliani:  President of the Robert Schuman Foundation