In an address to the German Parliament on Thursday, German Chancellor Angela Merkel outlined the issues she believed would dominate Germany's forthcoming 6-month presidency of the Council of the European Union.Merkel said the coronavirus represented the biggest challenge that the EU had faced in its history. "The pandemic has revealed how fragile the European project still is," said the chancellor."Europe has shown itself to be vulnerable. Cohesion and solidarity have never been as important as they are today. "The impact of the pandemic has also shown Europe needed to take more responsibility globally. Authoritarians, she said, had been using the crisis to their advantage."They want to undermine the rule of law. They want to harm people's dignity. They want to undermine people's human rights and civil rights."