EU: Michel (EU Council), in a difficult year due to Covid and the economic crisis, “the Union has made great progress”

“2021 has been a year of contrasts for the European Union, full of successes but also full of hard times that have tested us”. This was stated by Charles Michel, president of the European Council, in the foreword to the volume “The European way”, 134 pages describing, in texts and images, a year in the life of the EU. “It has been another year of Covid-19 and of all the challenges that come from a global pandemic”. Michel adds: “As to vaccines, the European Union has made great progress. The production and availability of vaccines for all Europeans has been a feat of real shared solidarity. As the year comes to its end, this success gives us all the reasons to believe that we will defeat the virus, even if we seeing the rise of the new Omicron variant”.
“2021 has also been the year of recovery. We have begun to develop a very ambitious strategy for the recovery and transformation of our development model, based on our double transition, the climatic and the digital one”. He notices: “Geopolitically, it has been a difficult year, a year affected by a rise in tensions and by events that have made the Europeans aware that, now more than ever, we must strengthen our ability to control our fate. To be more independent, in an open and interdependent world. To be stronger to strengthen our alliances. And be more influential in the world, to defend multilateral cooperation”.
Valentina Bombelli