CESI Secretary General Klaus Heeger said: “It is undoubtedly an achievement of Ms von der Leyen and her team and staff in the European Commission services that the EU stood together especially in terms of vaccine procuration, Covid recovery measures and CO2 emission targets. Of course, the EU still faces challenges that need to be addressed urgently, above all measures to secure the rule of law, the freedom of the media, trade unions and civil society, as well as our understanding of liberal democracies as such. Today however, the EU is not imploding or disintegrating, as has been tangibly feared still one year ago. With its Green Deal, it even drives the objective to become the world’s most climate-friendly continent. And after a bumpy start, the EU has delivered Covid vaccines as promised and fights the fallout of the pandemic with the unprecedented Recovery and Resilience Facility – a very strong signal of European solidarity in the EU and among the Member States. We should all appreciate these achievements and not underestimate them. We only need to think of where we were standing 12 or 18 months ago.”

He added: “Unfortunately, decent work as well as the central role of well-equipped and staffed public administrations to secure resilient societies and provide essential services especially to the most vulnerable members of the society have not been mentioned. The words ‘social’ and ‘worker’ are almost absent in her speech; ‘employment’ and ‘public service’ are not mentioned at all. The Green Deal is to be implemented in a socially fair manner, but what we need is a stand-along social agenda for more fairness, decent jobs and social protection for workers and citizens. We also need adequate resources, equipment, facilities and personnel for the public services. The Covid pandemic has taught once again that crises inevitably occur even if we do not know when exactly and which form they will take – and that public services need to be ready to help fight them. This requires more investments in the Member States, which the European Commission should encourage much more.”