Features

from the editor

Not the year we hoped for

After over­com­ing the two hard­est years of the Covid pan­demic, the world was eager to get out of the cri­sis, get back to nor­mal life, and re­cover from the dis­as­trous eco­nomic ef­fects of the lock­down pol­icy. How­ever, no one could have imag­ined that within a few weeks of the start of the year that is now com­ing to an end, war would break out again in Eu­rope and all re­cov­ery plans would go nowhere. When the Putin regime de­cided to at­tack Ukraine and start a war of in­va­sion, things sud­denly changed and it was clear to Eu­rope that very dif­fi­cult times were com­ing again. Rus­sia’s in­va­sion rep­re­sents a threat not only to Ukraine but to Eu­rope and to the world bal­ance, which has forced West­ern gov­ern­ments to mo­bilise a large amount of eco­nomic and mil­i­tary re­sources to help Ukraine re­sist and, hope­fully, win.

The war has had two im­me­di­ate ef­fects: a mi­gra­tion wave of mil­lions of peo­ple, which forced Eu­ro­pean coun­tries to pre­pare ur­gent re­cep­tion plans, and an un­prece­dented en­ergy price cri­sis, which has a di­rect im­pact on the econ­omy of mil­lions of fam­i­lies, while threat­en­ing the com­pet­i­tive­ness of Eu­ro­pean com­pa­nies.

The year 2022 will also be the year of Pe­ga­sus and Cata­lan­Gate, the biggest es­pi­onage scan­dal ever doc­u­mented. It was re­vealed that Spain spied on dozens of Cata­lans, most of them politi­cians, but also jour­nal­ists, lawyers, ac­tivists and fam­ily mem­bers, just for sym­pa­this­ing with the pro-in­de­pen­dence move­ment. Cata­lan­Gate has been one of the most fla­grant cases ex­am­ined by the com­mis­sion of in­quiry or­gan­ised by the Eu­ro­pean Par­lia­ment. These ac­tions by Eu­rope, con­cerned about the ef­fects that spy pro­grams like Pe­ga­sus have on fun­da­men­tal rights and democ­racy, con­trasts with the in­ac­tion of the Span­ish State. De­spite re­ports that the phone of the Span­ish PM has also been in­fected by Pe­ga­sus - with Mo­rocco under sus­pi­cion - the Span­ish par­lia­ment has re­fused to in­ves­ti­gate.

So if a year ago we all thought (and hoped) we would see a global re­cov­ery, the prospects for next year must nec­es­sar­ily be cau­tious, and maybe even pes­simistic. Be­cause 2022 will also be the year in which parts of the world went on alert due to the se­vere ef­fects of cli­mate change, with record-break­ing high tem­per­a­tures, de­struc­tive wild­fires and the worst droughts in liv­ing mem­ory.

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