A renaissance construction site

The current European legislature has been incredible. For the strength of strategic vision, based on the Green Plan as the director of transformation of our continent, to respond to the climate challenge and play a leadership role in transformations and in the future opportunities for European citizens and the entire world.

But also for the great crises we have had to go through: the pandemic, the supply crisis for industry and energy, the war in Ukraine, double-digit inflation, the conflict in Israel /Palestine. If someone had told President von der Leyen that in these four years he would have had to think the unthinkable, breaking decades-old taboos and making unprecedented decisions, he would never have believed it. Research, production and distribution of vaccines in record time; the suspension of the Stability Pact; the first Eurobond in European history, the 100 billion euros against unemployment; the Next Generation EU, with another 800 billion to finance the recovery and strengthening of post-pandemic transitions; over 100 billion in aid, including military aid, to Ukraine in a year and a half of war. And we mention only the most macroscopic steps, ending with COP28 in Dubai.
Europe was alone when at the end of 2019 it announced carbon neutrality by 2050, with a progressive reduction in the use of fossil fuels by 2030, investing increasingly in renewable energy and energy efficiency.
It was then followed by the USA after Trump and then partly by China. Now in Dubai, all the countries of the world, including the world's major oil and gas producers, have agreed that this is the path we all must take.

Far-sighted and courageous decisions which saved Europe and which today give us a profoundly different face and direction from those before the 2019 European elections. The prophets of doom have been proven wrong, the foundations of the European Renaissance and our common institutions have demonstrated a solid ability to react to crises.

But now the risk is thinking that we have done the most. Not only because the crises are not over, but because a series of structural issues must be addressed. The first is that of an adequate cruising speed in the identified direction, without giving in to too many who would like to stop it and mobilizing the many necessary resources. And then the internal institutional framework which needs substantial maintenance, the social and territorial tensions which are increasing following the ongoing crises and transformations, the geopolitical situation of upheaval of the rules with which the world has been governed up to now and the competition itself economic relationship between the two great giants USA and China, not to mention the new distance with the so-called global South and the emergence of new blocks, such as the BRICS, which risk taking Europe out of the game.

The next European elections in June 2024 and the legislature that opens are therefore the most important ever, while sovereignism and divisions return within European countries on many key issues, from budget solidarity to economic rules , from immigration to foreign policy. It will therefore be crucial to be able to explain well the successes achieved and the challenges we face, to present a concrete agenda of hope and transformation, which opens up solid prospects for everyone and leaves no one behind, to win the hearts and minds of European citizens and to send competent men and women in Europe. It will not be easy to counter false narratives and defeat the external forces that want to divide us, making the dividends of fears grow. But this is what must be done, with the passion of wanting to build a solid common future for 2030, as always open to the world.


Luca Jahier
NP January 2024