This essay appeared earlier in the bundle Freedom & Responsibility (2022), issued by Socires in cooperation with national committee 4 and 5 May. More information under Socires.nl/freedom and responsibility.

What is freedom? It's actually very simple: "My freedom ends where yours begins... and vice versa." And with that, it is also inextricably linked to responsibility. They're both words that we're easy to use, but behind which a whole world is hiding. And words matter. Its use is not innocent. The violent eruptions in human history rarely just fall out of the sky. They are usually introduced by words.

It did not start with the Holocaust at the time, but with words. Word for word, fellow human beings were stripped of their humanity. Until the annihilation of those people only because of whom they were . . . . . . . . . . . .

Remembering the victims. Remembering how an enlightened and civilized culture can get into the deepest pits of hell, and commemorating the sacrifices for democracy, human rights, and the rule of law that so many brought. The remembrance remains essential. All the more so since the generations who have experienced oppression, bondage and occupation have almost all said goodbye to us. And grows resistance as we pull the line of their story ourselves. "It's been nearly a hundred years" and "don't compare people to Nazis."

I get that.

National Socialism [of Hitler] was an extreme perversion of European history. And history doesn't repeat itself. But he does rhyme, as Mark Twain once said. Besides, it's not that long ago. If I deduct my age from my birth year 1961, I will be in 1901. The time of our grandparents and great-grandparents has only been a sigh. My grandparents were born in 1903. And with the diversity of the generations of war, the living memory finally passes into written history.

If so, it requires more energy to keep the memory, but above all the lessons learned, alive and up to date. For the problems we face are the same as the ones humanity has faced since the very beginning.

The ancient Greeks already wrote about good and evil, about what is bravery and some cowardice. One important lesson should be that nothing is written. Nothing is inevitable. Anyone who would study the rise and take over of Hitler can only conclude that there were a thousand and one reasons why he had played out politics, and how unlikely and even untruthful it would be that he would come to power.

But how many times has . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . The current pandemic alone should teach us this lesson. We're terrible at predicting, especially when it comes to the future. Part of our blindness is in the failure of our imagination.

The fall of the Wall in 1989? The financial and economic crisis in 2008? The Arab Spring 2010? Brexit in 2016? Trump? In retrospect, all clear, no one expected it before. Maybe we should open our eyes and ears more widely. Nothing is inevitable, nothing is unimaginable. Not just looking, but seeing, not just hearing, but listening.

I sometimes test the following quote with students.

We fight an enemy that's different than us. Not open, but hidden. Not straight forward, but tricky. Not fair, but mean. Not national, but international. He doesn't believe in working, but speculates with money. He doesn't have his own home country, but he believes he owns the whole world.

Then I ask what is this about? Who could it be from? Because we hear here all the anti-Semitic clichés we know. It is a quote from a government leader in the European Union. He expressed it in March 2018 during an election campaign. He had declared a Jew, George Soros, his greatest enemy.

But when you read this and tell young people, they often don't recognize the hidden message. They don't feel it and they can't place it. And these are intelligent, benevolent, idealistic young people. In English, you'd say they don't hear the dog whistle.

Words a world hides behind. And sometimes they are images, as we recently saw in a terrible caricature in the Volkskrant of Maurice de Hond, where the maker in no way realized that he had put all the stereotypes used by the Nazis about the Jews in that one drawing.

But if young people can't tell these phenomena, then what can we do? If you can't tell it, then you can't acknowledge the germs of hate speech, or hate speech itself, and you can be sucked into a politics that does nothing but turn people against each other and play each other.

The rise of hate speech, nationalism, xenophobia, and illiberalism, sometimes also just a euphemism for freedom, it happens before our eyes, it happens in our neighborhood. You see it in the social media, it finds fertile soil in our political discourse... Again, I'd say.

The values we hold high, which are in our laws and treaties, are not self-evident. The freedoms we cherish, which protect us and allow us to live our lives as we wish, are certainly not self-evident. They need mature and active citizens. Prince Claus used to talk about "Sivil Courage," which is a wonderful expression. Citizenhood. These values also require mutual respect and dialogue, rather than humiliation and monologue.

Mutual respect also expresses itself in solidarity. We're still in a pandemic and we're doing everything we can to get this one. In the fight against Covid-19, young people have shown exceptional solidarity with other generations by accepting and respecting all kinds of limitations that they did not benefit themselves so much. Not so much about themselves, because as far as we know, most young people are at relatively low risk. But precisely because of the health and safety of older generations, like my generation and my parents.

I think this is a very big sacrifice.

I therefore think it is only natural that we should bear this solidarity in mind when we look to the future. It is now time to show solidarity with future generations. How do we get out of this crisis? What debts are we charging on their shoulders? What kind of world do we leave for them? Because we are also in the midst of a climate and biodiversity crisis. An existential crisis that no vaccine can handle. So most people still ask that politicians and directors take action.

That is good news, because it will not work without the support of the people.

If you then define what to do to limit global warming, then it becomes more difficult. Because the investments required for such a fundamental revolution are high. It also requires a change in our way of producing and consuming, of how we move, how we heat and cool our houses, and how we grow and consume our food.

It takes a completely different way of life. Change is always difficult. For some, too. We got to see that. We got to listen to that. Because if this transition doesn't Fair happens, she just won't happen. But we also have to be honest: Doing nothing is not an option. The cost is simply too high to bear. Think of droughts and already lost harvests, devastating forest fires, extreme weather patterns that run millions. Think of the extinction of 1 million species, including the pollinators and insects that are necessary to produce food. War over water, about food: are they things that we now think are unlikely to happen, and then have to say "Now it was really inevitable"?

I think we should always consider the worst.

And that is why the European Green Deal is not climate- but growth strategy. It's not just about climate, it's about security. And it is why European Heads of Government have asked to base the economic recovery of the EU and its Member States on a green transition and digital transformation.Europe wants to be the first continent in the world that is climate neutral by 2050. We have increased our ambitions in this respect. By 2030, i.e. in less than 10 years, our emissions should have fallen by at least 55% compared to 1990. This requires a very strong tightening of existing regulations in many areas such as energy, transport, housing, land use and so on. The incentives to be given to . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . We're working on that now.

Then you should think about for example the restoration of forests so that they have more CO₂ and strengthen biodiversity. Three quarters of our forests are in poor condition, on a European scale. We need to do something about that. Or adaptation of emissions trading and possible expansion to road transport and buildings, so that there is a price on CO emissions₂. We will also increase renewable energy and energy efficiency targets. Cars will be allowed to emit less, and we need to prepare the infrastructure for the huge growth of electric driving. So charging stations everywhere, but also generating renewable energy.

For industry, it is important that we do not undermine greening in Europe as a result of so-called carbon leakage. This means that companies go elsewhere where the rules will be less strict. Emissions have to be reduced all over the world. A carbon charge at the border should prevent CO₂-emissions simply move. We must also pay particular attention to the effects and consequences of how we consume in our trade. The import of products such as palm oil, wood and soya should not lead to the disappearance of primary forests in other parts of the world. Whether it's South America, Africa or Asia.

This is all in new proposals that we will be presenting this summer. This year will prove crucial. In October, countries from all over the world meet in Kunming, China, to agree on biodiversity. And in November in Glasgow to talk about climate. It's crucial because it's really one by twelve. We only have a few years left. Fortunately, you can see that this is also increasingly shared internationally.

The message is that everyone has responsibility for our shared future. No one can get out of here alone, only together we can get out of here.

I repeat, my freedom ends where yours begins, and vice versa. This will also increasingly apply to the way we live, produce, consume, build, grow, and mine. Man must learn to live within the limits of the earth.

Article 3 of the Treaty on European Union states:

The Union aims to promote peace, its values and the well-being of its peoples.

And this article essentially states what it is about; It's not so much about the planet itself as about the welfare of our people. After all, the planet will manage without humans. She has done so for billions of years. The current pandemic and the unprecedented "Lockdown' have led to the words health and well-being. People no longer accept that they and their children are slowly suffocated by emissions from freight or industry. People no longer accept that the ocean is gradually harboring more plastic than fish, that microplastics also sneak into our own bodies via what we eat or drink, or through the tires of our cars or the clothes we wear. People no longer accept that we can cut down forests endlessly, destroying our flora and fauna. People want and deserve the freedom to continue to shape their lives in health and well-being.

And they understand that this requires something, namely responsibility to each other, and to those who come after us. It won't be easy. It is difficult to say goodbye to a world that has been running on fossil fuels for over a century and a half. The good news is it's possible. We got the technology, we got the brains, we got the money.

What we need now is political and above all social courage. The courage to show solidarity and to take responsibility. For our freedom and for generations after us. When I look at the young generations, I am extremely optimistic. Without them, there wouldn't have been a Green Deal. They go out on the street, raise their parents. Also at my house.

We owe it to them to build a viable future. That not only ensures the survival of man, but also puts health and well-being above all else. For everyone, not just the few lucky ones in the rich world. A future in which we look beyond the sterile figures of the Gross National Product that are always on the financial page.

Let me finish where I started. Words. Freedom and responsibility. They go hand in hand. But they don't come by themselves. They need protection, maintenance, and reinforcement every day. I would add: It's not nice that we can do something now, not for ourselves, but for future generations. That which we are doing now, that we may not even benefit so much ourselves, but our children and grandchildren will. That we plant trees that we know will never be in their shadows again, but our children and grandchildren will.

That we'll build things that they'll say later, so should have, thanks parents for doing that. Instead of saying "parents," what rotten world have you left us? What we have to do requires imagination: an open and critical look, and a good dose zivil curage. 

That's what I wish everyone.

Frans Timmermans is Commissioner and Vice-President of the Von der Leyen Commission.