On Thursday, French President Emmanuel Macron — the self-designated cheerleader for a more ambitious and integrated Europe — concluded at the end of a fruitless six-hour teleconference with European Union leaders that “what is at stake is the survival of the European project.” A day later, Italian President Sergio Mattarella, in a rare late-night address to the nation on a day that saw the highest number of deaths in Italy from coronavirus, warned that “everyone [must] understand the seriousness of the threat faced by Europe before it is too late.” Answering his own question, Mattarella noted that E.U. leaders have not.
These ominous words are signs that the European Union itself might be an unintended casualty of the pandemic.
European summits that produce little are nothing new. Europe has survived an extraordinary litany of crises over the past decade: a financial crisis, a security crisis emanating from Russia, a migration crisis driven by Syrian and Libyan civil wars, an internal democratic crisis led by Hungary, the departure of its second-largest economy, and a U.S.-induced transatlantic trade and security crisis.
But Europe’s failing response to the coronavirus both rekindles the political toxicity from these previous crises and strips bare the E.U.’s institutional and rhetorical pretenses. This historic “peace project,” as it is often referred to, is steadily giving way to national instincts and a frantic confrontation for survival.
When Italy requested emergency assistance for more personal protective equipment, European nations did not respond, fearing the depletion of their own national stocks. Although the European Commission and E.U. members have taken subsequent steps to facilitate greater humanitarian support to Italy, the damage was done.
Why is the E.U. unable to respond to a crisis that should play to its strengths of close coordination, rule-making and solidarity? First, health care remains a national function. Although the E.U. has an agency similar to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, its main function is information-sharing; it does not assert control or have enforcement authority. The disparities in Europe’s national emergency health-care capabilities mirror its economic inequalities: Germany has the most critical care beds among E.U. members; Portugal has the fewest. Though it has more than 62,000 reported cases, Germany has seen fewer deaths than others.
The pandemic is both a health and an economic crisis, and on the economic front, European leaders have simply returned to their old and unresolved fights over shared debt. Northern European creditor countries show no interest in permanently underwriting the indebted southern members, where the crisis has been most dramatic. The E.U.’s two main sponsors, France and Germany, are deeply divided over this issue: Paris champions the weaker south while Germany, the champion of the well-to-do north, stands firm. Importantly, the E.U. has relaxed its debt and deficit rulebook a bit, but unless there is agreement to transfer massive amounts of cash to the neediest members, the E.U. will continue to politically and economically fracture along north-south lines.
The E.U. has also returned to its unresolved differences over border control and migration. One of the most central tenets of the E.U., the free movement of people (as well as goods), has been already been irreparably harmed. Internal European borders were erected by several European countries during the 2015-2016 migration crisis. The pandemic will only cement this reality as countries impose new travel restrictions.
The coronavirus will not cause the immediate downfall of the E.U., but it is leaving it a hollow shell. As one senior European official warns, without action, it could become “devastated and broken.” With borders again in place, future debt support unclear, and lack of tangible solidarity, the decades of European treaties, rules, directives and regulations now seem meaningless and limited as the region mobilizes against the coronavirus. Conducting business as usual will fail.
Should the European ideal of solidarity and cohesion cease to have meaning for most of Europe’s citizens, it could also tragically begin to spell the end of the project itself. The E.U.’s accelerating decline means that one of the key pillars of the Western democratic world is shaking badly at a time when Russia and China are presenting competing visions of the future. A fragmented and disjointed Europe would be a disaster for not only European nations, but also for the United States and democracy globally.
Heather A. Conley is senior vice president for Europe, Eurasia and the Arctic at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) in Washington and a former deputy assistant secretary of state from 2001 to 2005. John Kornblum lives in Berlin, where he is senior counselor at the law firm Noerr and a CSIS senior adviser. He is a former assistant secretary of state for Europe and U.S. ambassador to Germany.