Bold words for Europe

The European Commission president's annual "State of the EU" speech usually exaggerates past achievements and promises whatever is most pleasing to as many of the European Parliament's political groupings as possible. It is long on visions and platitudes and short on specifics, in other words. This time, the state of the world is so different, so difficult, that Ursula von der Leyen's speech would, in any case, have been more significant. It would indicate whether the European Union is prepared to take on the great challenges of the time: the pandemic, climate change, mass migration, Brexit, the ever greater projection of power by China and Russia in the void left by the United States, Turkey's growing belligerence.

The pandemic has already driven the EU member-states to overcome the great taboo on issuing mutual debt, so that they can support businesses and citizens as they...