“The EU is finished,” gloat the nay-sayers. “Even faced with the coronavirus, its members can’t stick together.”
Certainly EU leaders meeting on Thursday – by socially -distant video conference – glaringly failed to agree to share the debt they are all racking up fighting Covid – .
From her flat in Berlin, where she is self-isolating after her doctor tested positive for the virus, German Chancellor Angela Merkel openly admitted to the disharmony over financial instruments.
What leaders did agree on was asking Eurogroup finance ministers to explore the subject further, reporting back in two weeks’ time.
Two weeks.
The EU is famous for kicking difficult decisions down the road but in coronavirus terms, with spiralling infection and death rates, two weeks feels like an eternity.
for ordinary peop le, frightened for their health, the safety of their loved ones, worrying about their rent and feeding their family after businesses shut down, the idea that Europe’s leaders spent six hours on Thursday night, squabbling over the wording of their summit conclusions in order to defer a key decision over coronavirus funds, will be incomprehensible.
Spain and Italy – ravaged by the effects of the virus on their populations and their limited public finances – were deeply disappointed. Italy was already one of the EU’s most Eurosceptic member states before Covid – hit.
Italian Twitter was littered with expletives on Thursday – and those were just the posts from politicians.
President Emmanuel Macron of France is said to have told leaders the political reaction after the crisis could spell the end of the EU.
The thing is, the coronavirus simply highlights already existing, well-known difficulties in the EU.
European Commission
We need an intelligent strategy that at the same time protects the health of our citizens and keeps our economy afloat and our goods and cross-border workers moving
Firstly, the tension between centralizing power in “Brussels” vs keeping decision-making with national governments / parliaments. Public health, for example is a national competency, which is why we’ve seen different EU countries taking different national measures to mitigate the effects of Covid – .
And secondly, when it comes to economics, when wealthier countries like the Netherlands and Germany hear the words “debt-sharing” or “solidarity”, what they worry that their voters will understand by that is – “richer EU countries in northern Europe have to foot the bill for poorer ones in the south”.
The Hague and Berlin never liked the idea of eurobonds. Calling them corona bonds now doesn’t help warm them to the idea.
And the European Commission can’t force the hand of national leaders.
Yet it’s far too simplistic to write off the European Union.
When EU countries closed their national borders on one another during the migrant crisis, many predicted the bloc’s demise but the EU muddled through. It’s highly likely to scrape by again now, too.
It’s also too lazy to say European unity has been entirely absent during the coronavirus crisis.
We are talking about the EU, after all.
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