As a European, I am keenly aware how much the map of Europe alone has changed, with the end of the Cold War and the further development of the European Union. Europeans now have a unique opportunity to create a Europe that is truly whole and truly free, the largest community of democracies today. This is a first in recorded history. Much has changed in other parts of the world too. Dictatorships have fallen, to be replaced by fledgling democracies.
Conflict remains in all too many places, but the march of freedom can be detected across the globe.
This is not a prognosis we could have made twenty years ago. This is unjust and unsustainable. It is an affront to decency, and a threat to world stability. The challenges of globalisation are, by contrast, entirely new. I see globalisation as an opportunity to be exploited.