“We Europeans must be very proud of what we have accomplished in the last seventy years. We have experienced the most outstanding renaissance in history. European work, talent, entrepreneurship and creativity have created an age of widespread prosperity and growth, in a setting of strong solidarity. Unfortunately, in the last ten years a crisis has slowed down this profitable process and the pro-European drive as well. Fear makes one withdraw onto oneself, makes one reject the model of open society promoted by the European Union. Walls, borders, nationalisms reappear, passed off as antidotes to a globalisation that seems to have spiralled out of control”. This was stated this morning by the president of the European Parliament, Antonio Tajani, as he spoke at the State of the Union conference, in Florence (Palazzo Vecchio). “But if there’s a lesson to be learnt, it is that globalisation has deeply changed the concept of sovereignty. Only by asserting together part of national sovereignty can we protect our citizens in the increasingly complex reality of the global world”. Tajani added: “Those who want to bring us back into the enclosure of national borders are telling stories. Those who point at the European project as at the source of our malaise are missing the point. Quite the opposite, the European Union is part of the solution. Only by working together, only by speaking in one voice, can the European countries protect their citizens”.