Europe needs confidence – and has every reason to be confident. This is the core message of the speech that Chancellor Olaf Scholz (SPD) will give on Thursday morning in the Bundestag. The chancellor himself is confident, but probably also wants to encourage his government and other Europeans before the EU summit next week. The 27 heads of state and government will meet in Brussels. Scholz sounds in the Bundestag as if a coach summons his team before an important game. "This Europe is worth defending, improving and expanding it," he says, adding: "Especially now and now more than ever!"

Friederike Haupt

Political correspondent in Berlin.

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It is not about mourning a "good old time", but about getting down to work in order to start a "good new time". Together – Scholz talks a lot about that this morning. He wants to "set off together", stresses that the internal market works "only together", mentions that in Saarland Germans and Americans are now building a European future together, namely a plant for urgently needed semiconductors. The Germans have saved gas together, and together Europe is taking precautions, not only for the next few years, but for decades. Germany opposes Russia's war against Ukraine "together with our partners in Europe and the world," says the Chancellor, and together they will ensure that Russia does not circumvent the sanctions.

Scholz quotes the historian Timothy Garton Ash, who describes the challenges facing Europe today as overwhelmingly great, but at the same time warns against discouragement and fatalism. "This Europe, our democratic and free Europe, is and remains a unique project of hope in the world." The Chancellor agrees with this interpretation. He was also grateful that Garton Ash was classifying what European politics is really about today: namely Europe itself. "It's about peace in freedom, it's about democracy, security, prosperity, good life chances and good work in a climate-neutral future – for all citizens in Europe." This is what the Federal Government is committed to.

Scholz: "We can make new beginnings and upheavals"

Again and again, the chancellor receives applause from the parliamentary groups of the traffic light government, especially when he emphasizes the successes of this same government: Last year at this time, the gas storage facilities were 70 percent empty, Scholz emphasizes, for example, today they are still 60 percent full. The government's measures – relief packages, defensive shield – had ensured that the country had come through the winter well.

When Scholz sums up, if it matters, "then we can awaken and upheaval," loud laughter sounds from the parliamentary group of the AfD – and the chancellor adds: Yes, you will get the big upheaval, the thing will end well, "and bad for the AfD, because the business field is gone." Scholz concludes after twenty minutes with the assessment that confidence cannot be prescribed, but results from successes already achieved. "Anyone who has mastered difficult challenges in the past has reason to be optimistic. Just as we have succeeded together over the past twelve months."