The challenges that the European Union will have to face by 2022

The European Union (EU) faces a demanding 2022, with challenges such as continuing to fight against pandemic, deploy recovery funds, advance climate or digital legislation, and deal with external threats, especially from the East.

COVID-19

The pandemic, now reinvigorated with the omicron variant, continues to be the first planetary challenge and the EU is focusing its efforts on promoting vaccination with booster doses and increasing drug donations to third countries.

Energy and inflation

With the price of gas at record highs, its automatic reflection on consumers’ electricity bills and little prospect of the situation improving in the first months of the year, the energy price crisis will continue to be one of the major headaches for the Union European in 2022.

Climate and digitization

In parallel, the EU begins the legislative development to reduce its emissions by 55% in 2030 compared to 1990 as a path to decarbonize the economy in the middle of the century, a debate that will last for years and is expected to be intense.

It will also try to approve its two main laws in the first quarter of 2022 to limit the power of large internet platforms such as Google, Facebook or Amazon, calls to regulate free competition, by demanding greater transparency in their algorithms and setting the responsibility of the technology when it comes to removing and moderating illegal content.

Security and defense

The great bet of the EU in defense for 2022, which should be approved in March, is the so-called Strategic Compass for the 27 to gain autonomy in terms of security and defense in the face of new challenges such as hybrid or cyber threats, and which contemplates power deploy rapid-action forces of about 5,000 personnel.

The biggest threat that the EU has at the moment in its immediate environment is the tension between Ukraine and Russia.

Economic recovery

The EU is faced with the task of successfully deploying the € 800 billion recovery fund with which it wants to relaunch the economy after the pandemic hit and boost green and digital transitions.

With most of the national plans approved, the Member States face the first examinations of the reforms and investments promised to Brussels throughout 2022 to unblock the aid tranches, an unprecedented challenge in the bloc.

The launch of the recovery fund coincides with a moment of takeoff in the economic recovery threatened by inflation and the current supply crisis, which, although considered temporary, arouse fears in Brussels due to its impact.

Added to all this is the resumption of the debates on the future of the fiscal rules that establish limits to the public debt and deficit, a debate that the Commission wants to close before the end of the year but that still divides the countries of the south and north of the EU.

Rule of law

The authoritarian drift of Hungary and Poland, both with post-pandemic recovery funds blocked until they reverse their violations of the principles on which the European Union is based, such as judicial independence or non-discrimination, will remain one of the the main internal challenges of the EU in 2022.

The Polish Supreme Court’s questioning of the primacy of European legislation or the Hungarian anti-LGTBIQ + regulations have increased the tension between Budapest and Warsaw with Brussels and the parties will have to seek areas of understanding because neither Hungary nor Poland intends to leave the EU or the other partners can expel them.

Migration

Within the EU, in parallel to the lack of progress in the negotiation of the European Migration and Asylum Pact, the division between Spain and other countries in the front line continues, which call for an equitable distribution of responsibility in migration matters and others, such as those of Visegrad -Poland, Slovakia, Czech Republic and Hungary-, reluctant to host refugees.

On the other hand, in the last year a new threat has arisen: the use of migratory flows as a political weapon by States such as Morocco and Belarus, the former with a one-off surge in May and the latter facilitating the arrival of thousands for months. irregular migrants to the borders of Lithuania, Poland and Latvia.