The EU confronts huge challenges. These include accelerating innovation, deepening financial integration, protecting its security and maintaining the values of freedom, democracy and social welfare on which its society has been built since the second world war. None of this will be easy given the adverse changes the bloc now confronts, not least the political disarray in France and Germany. Yet, in confronting its future, it can build on great historic successes. The EU has, after all, managed to enlarge and extend its union over almost seven decades (and longer still if one goes back to the European Coal and Steel Community, created in 1951).
欧盟面临巨大挑战。这些挑战包括加速创新、深化金融一体化、保护自身安全以及维护自由、民主和社会福利价值观这些自二战以来欧洲社会的基石。考虑到欧盟目前面临的不利变化，尤其是法国和德国出现的政治混乱，这些事情都不容易实现。然而，通过直面未来的挑战，欧盟可以再续它伟大的历史性成功。毕竟，欧盟在近70年的时间里成功地扩大和扩展了它的联盟（如果追溯到1951年创建的欧洲煤钢共同体(European Coal and Steel Community)，时间就更长了）。