We begin this year with no illusions left.

Across Europe and beyond, the weather has become a message. War has returned to our borders and to our vocabulary. Democracies feel thinner, institutions more brittle, trust more fragile than at any time in a generation. Many sense that something essential is slipping away. The fear is no longer only that we might lose, but that we have learned to hide responsibility itself—behind systems and procedures, mandates and incentives, self-interest and the passive voice of “economic necessity.”

We have become extraordinarily sophisticated at explaining why nothing else was possible.

And that is the greatest danger.

The crises we face—political, ecological, social, economic—are not failures of intelligence. They are failures of courage. Not the loud courage of strongmen or grand gestures, but the quieter, harder courage to stay with reality when it becomes uncomfortable; to tell truth when truth threatens position; to act justly without the shelter of guaranteed returns.

There is no algorithm for what now confronts us. No procedure that can absolve us of responsibility. Every serious decision will hurt someone. Every honest path involves risk. Every attempt to do good exposes us to being wrong.

This has always been the condition of human action.

Leadership, in such times, is not the art of optimisation. It is the refusal to let dashboards replace dignity. It is the willingness to remain present to the consequences of our own decisions, rather than exporting them to markets, margins, or the future. It is choosing to dwell—vulnerably and attentively—where our organisations fail, instead of looking away.

2026 will test whether our institutions can still bear moral weight, or whether they exist only to circulate excuses. It will test whether democracy can still mean wisdom, not just procedure; whether the economy can still mean solidarity, not just liquidity; whether power can still mean service, not just exploitation.

2026 will test our courage.

And here is what gives me hope: somewhere in every university, company, ministry and city there are people already showing it—quietly, without applause. They are naming contradictions others prefer to smooth over. They are refusing the comfort of moral neutrality. They are choosing participation over distance, justice over safety, the hard work of virtue over the easy expedient of process.

In 2026, protect them. Stand with them. Become one of them.

Because the good does not arrive by decree or regulation. It arrives only when someone is willing to carry it—into uncertainty, into conflict, into the real.

Let this be the year we stop waiting for safer conditions and start acting like adults again.
Let it be the year we proved ourselves worthy of a future that depends on us.

Courage does not guarantee victory. But it guarantees integrity.
And courage is contagious.

Let this be the year of courage!

#Leadership #Courage #Democracy #MoralResponsibility #InstitutionalIntegrity