This Wednesday 15 September, the President of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, will make her second speech on the state of the union before the European Parliament. It will be interesting to compare this speech with last year’s (see EUROPE B12561A1), which bore the title “A Union of vitality in a world of fragility”. The word ‘vitality’ was specifically chosen to express the EU’s economic and sanitary resilience, an area in which we can now confidently say that a...