| 10 January 2010 
On 8 January 2010 the Swedish minister of Foreign Affairs, Carl Bildt, formally handed on the baton of the rotating Presidency of the EU to the Spanish prime minister, José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, at an inaugural gala at which both spoke of the decisive moment which Europe is going through and the need to live up to the expectations which it raises. Both Bildt and Zapatero emphasised the EU’s potential with its 500 million citizens, its social model, its democratic values and its successful history of integration and noted that with the new instruments which the Treaty of Lisbon gives it, Europe can take part in ‘shaping the new multi-polar order’. Bildt and Zapatero expressed their belief that the EU will pass the test as it always has, strengthening integration and union between its members.
| 
