We begin 2021 with the hope that we can turn the page on the unprecedented pandemic that changed our lives and clipped our wings.

This illusion has a plural name: vaccines. Created and authorised in record time, the aim is to immunise at least seventy percent of the European population by the summer.

The news is that the Commission has the task of effectively coordinating their provision and setting the population's preferential criteria, in accordance with the European Council. It is the member states that are demanding a greater role for the European institutions.

Indeed, the health role of the Union is outstanding despite the fact that it has practically no competences in the field of public health, beyond the generic objective of internal market integration (Art. 168 and 114 TFEU).

Since March 2020, when the WHO sounded the health alarm, describing the crisis in China as a pandemic, the European Union's initiative has been growing, with a succession of aid programmes.

These increasingly ambitious plans enjoyed the clear consensus of the Member States, aware that a stronger and more inclusive Europe will enable us to be more effective, more secure and more courageous.

The Council has met in its various formations, generally by videoconference, on 238 occasions from 1 March 2020 until today, 7 January 2021. In relation to Covid-19 alone, it has met 99 times. The European Council (Heads of State or Government and President of the Commission) has done so 10 times.

After the first steps, aimed at the adoption of concrete economic emergency measures - authorisation of state aid, moratoriums on company and mortgage loans or restrictions on foreign investment - the work of the European institutions, especially the Commission and the Council, but also the Parliament, has progressed to unprecedented milestones since the creation of the European Union.

Thus, a budget financing has been designed that will mobilise resources amounting to more than 1.8 trillion euros.

It will do so through the Next GenerationUE (NGUE, 2021-2023) and long-term budget (MFF, 2021-2027)

The temporary instrument will help boost the recovery of post-COVID-19 Europe. To this end, for the first time it will issue its own debt, already rated AAA by leading international rating companies.

The next generation - the next generation - will have to stand in solidarity with the current generation, footing the bill (until 2058), in a binding intergenerational effort.

The EU's long-term budget will be the largest stimulus package financed by the Union. It will be closed on 17 December 2020 and will increase the flexibility mechanisms that will help to address the uncertainties that will be addressed in the timeframe.

Thanks to the stimulus Europe will be greener, more digital and more resilient.

But the funding will not be manna raining down from heaven (for Spain, overall, 117 billion euros). On the contrary, it will be subject to various forms of conditionality: on the destination of expenditure; on management; and for the first time on compliance with the Rule of Law.

Compliance with the requirements of the rule of law, Rule of Lawis the unwavering hallmark of European identity. Reinforcing this idea, the Commission published in September 2020 a country report on the state of democratic requirements.(https://ec.europa.eu/info/publications/2020-rule-law-report-communication-and-country-chapters_es.)

At the same time, the Commission is making progress in strengthening Europe's geopolitical strategy. The establishment of a framework for a stable economic relationship with the United Kingdom after Brexit (the design of the border, the port and airport of Gibraltar have yet to be finalised) is accompanied by a stronger European presence in China. Recently, after seven years of negotiation, an agreement in principle has been reached to close an ambitious investment programme.

The objective for the EU will be to facilitate market access for European investors, while China seeks homogenisation of the existing legal framework in a single agreement.

In conclusion, health, democratic principles, recovery and long-term budgetary policy, together with geopolitical positioning, are, always guided by the objectives of sustainability - including gender equality policies - and digitalisation, the new illusions of Europeans, on a new path towards the new generation that once again revives Schuman's historic Declaration of 9 May 1950 according to which "...the European Union is a new generation of Europeans...".Europe will not be built all at once or as a whole: it will be built through concrete achievements, which first and foremost create a de facto solidarity".

Seventy years later, despite, or possibly because of, a difficult situation, Europe is growing stronger.