Russia’s recent invasion of Ukraine on 24 February has led to a further surge in energy and commodity prices. The price of a barrel of Brent crude oil has quickly gone above USD 100, the first time this has happened since 2014, reaching almost USD 150 at the start of the 10th week of the year. As for wheat, last Friday it reached an unprecedented EUR 393 per tonne on the European market Euronext, compared to EUR 284 per tonne in November 2021. [1]

Devastating floods in the Greater Region, forest fires in the south of Europe, and record temperatures…. An accumulation of extreme weather events in Europe and around the world has dominated the news this summer. The conclusions of 230 experts from 60 countries that make up the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) are therefore not surprising: they show with an unprecedented degree of certainty and precision that the climate is changing more quickly than expected. This sixth assessment report, ‘Climate Change 2021: The Physical Science Basis’, published in August although drafting began in 2017-2018, warns that the critical threshold of 1.5°C (compared to the pre-industrial era) will have already been passed by around 2030. That is, ten years earlier than predicted in 2013. To keep warming below 2°C until 2030 and delay, or at least limit, the increasingly damaging and recurring effects of global warming, scientists are sounding the alarm and calling on the international community to act without delay.

The vaccination campaign is faltering, and Luxembourg’s performance in this regard (compared with most other developed countries) is in flagrant contradiction with the evolution of its GDP. Indeed, while Luxembourg is still unable to increase the rate of vaccination of its population – an absolute prerequisite for maintaining a certain degree of acceptance of the measures restricting individual and collective freedoms and for giving employees and companies a chance to emerge from this crisis – the Grand Duchy recorded a surprisingly solid economic performance at the end of 2020. In the fourth quarter of 2020, the GDP in real terms (seasonally adjusted) increased by 1.4% compared with the fourth quarter of 2019. Its quarterly evolution was 1.6% compared to the previous quarter.