State of the Union: What has the Commission done since the last speech and what it plans to unveil
When Ursula von der Leyen steps behind the lectern in the Strasbourg hemicycle on Wednesday to deliver her annual State of the Union address, Europe will look vastly different than it did a year ago.
Back then the European Union had a higher COVID-19 vaccination rate than the UK or US, and the economy was rebounding from its pandemic-induced stupor. Uncertainty seemed to be abating and the Commission president duly informed parliamentarians that her institution would work to dispel it even further by proposing legislation in five key areas.
These included ramping up COVID-19 vaccine donations worldwide and strengthening the bloc's response to future health crises, ensuring respect for the rule of law in the Union, boosting efforts to tackle climate change, developing a common EU defence strategy following botched evacuations from Afghanistan, and rolling out a more coordinated approach to migration.
Just five months after her keynote address, Russia launched a full-scale, illegal and unprovoked war against its neighbour, blanketing Europe in uncertainty once more and leaving member states to deal with a triple whammy of crises: energy, cost of living and refugees.
"The Commission can have its plans, but of course, it needs to be responding to the reality. And the reality was very dynamic those past 12 months," Pawel Zerka, policy fellow at the European Council on Foreign Relations (ECFR), a think tank, told Euronews.
"So I don't know whether we can assess the Commission by merely looking at whether they have accomplished the plans that they set for themselves 12 months ago," he added.
But experts say the EU's executive did manage to carry out many of its promises from the last address.
"I think COVID-19 is going to be regarded
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