I am the first woman to be President of the European Commission. I am the President of the European Commission. And this is how I expected to be treated when visiting Turkey two weeks ago, like a Commission President, but I was not.

A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush - or caution brings safety - has become a slogan of bank customers during the pandemic. Before Covid-19 hit, the global economy was on the rise - companies were not hesitant to take out loans, investing in new business ventures and creating jobs, individuals were taking out mortgages as well as consumer loans to finance renovation works, vacations or car purchases. In the aftermath of the coronavirus pandemic outbreak, however, the world stood still.

A large portion of the modern world's wealth has been siphoned away by the Covid-19 pandemic. A logical step to internationally offset that could be the redistribution of global resources. Such actions have been widely supported by the World Bank and the UN, with the two organisations proposing that the biggest winners from pandemic-driven processes share some of their accumulated profits. It is still unclear if and to what extent such an appeal would be heeded as in the real world policies based on logical links are rarely pursued.

Over a year into the pandemic, the world is mentally exhausted and itching to return to some semblance of normalcy. One way to get there is to vanquish the virus, which - if at all possible - would take at least one more year. The other route involves learning to live with the virus and limiting its spread through a massive vaccination effort and vaccine certificates, also known as vaccine or green passports.

In the 2019 elections to the European Parliament, turnout rose from a historic low in 2014 of 42.6 per cent to 50.7 per cent. Despite this increase, turnout is still low relative to turnout in national elections and varies drastically across the European Union, with some countries reporting upwards of 80% while others still struggle to mobilise more than a third of their population to participate.

“The man of forty crowns: Is there no way to eradicate this contagion ravaging Europe? They tried to weaken the poison of smallpox, why not try to do something about syphilis too?

The head physician: There could only be one solution - for all European rulers to unite… It would be much better if they come to an agreement and beat back humankind's common enemy…”

Disinformation, hybrid war, lack of predictability, attempts to divide Member States on many issues, full neglect of the international law and order. All this has characterised Russia's attitude towards Europe in the last decade. As if it was Moscow's main enemy.

The devil is in the detail. The revelation of the contract between AstraZeneca and the UK yesterday is ample proof of that wisdom.

The EU’s recent proposals to strengthen its economic sovereignty and the international role of the euro are a step in the right direction but must be followed up by concerted action from member states to expand the eurozone economy as a whole, and its trading reach. Without greater international use of the euro, the Union’s strategic autonomy will be considerably limited.

I went to Moscow this week to test, through principled diplomacy, whether the Russian government was interested in addressing differences and reversing the negative trend in our relations. The reaction I received points visibly in a different direction. So, as EU we will have to reflect on the broader implications and chart a way forward. We are at a crossroads. The main parameters of the geopolitical landscape of the 21st century are being drawn.