Coronavirus could be final straw for EU, European experts warn

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Leaders are warned that if division prevails, pandemic will be more destructive than Brexit, migration and bailout crises



The European Union has weathered the storms of eurozone bailouts, the migration crisis and Brexit, but some fear coronavirus could be even more destructive.

In a rare intervention Jacques Delors, the former European commission president who helped build the modern EU, broke his silence last weekend to warn that lack of solidarity posed “a mortal danger to the European Union”.

Enrico Letta, a former prime minister of Italy, has said the EU faces a “deadly risk” from the global pandemic. “We are facing a crisis that is different from previous crises,” he told the Guardian – partly, he said, because of the unpredictable progression of the virus, partly because “Europeanism” has been weakened by other crises of the past decade.

“The communitarian spirit of Europe is weaker today than 10 years ago,” he said, adding that the biggest danger for the EU was “the Trump virus”.

If everyone took the strategy of “Italy first”, “Belgium first” or “Germany first”, he said, “we will all sink altogether”.

“This is definitely a make-it-or-break-it moment for the European project,” said Nathalie Tocci, a former adviser to the EU foreign policy chief. “If it goes badly this really risks being the end of the union. It fuels all the nationalist-populism.”

In the early phase of the crisis, Russia and China sent medical supplies to Italy, while its nearest neighbours failed to immediately respond to Rome’s calls for help.

The pandemic has reopened the wounds of the eurozone crisis, resurrecting stereotypes about “profligate” southern Europeans and “hard-hearted” northerners. “Each crisis has reduced trust between member states and within the whole system and this is a real problem,” said Heather Grabbe, a former adviser to the EU enlargement commissioner.

Any deal carries the seeds of a future argument. Every time the EU has strengthened its hand in response to a crisis, whether centralised refugee policy or oversight of national budgets, there has been resistance and resentment, according to Middelaar. “The Germans have still not fully digested the role of the European Central Bank as the lender of last resort,” he said while mandatory refugee quotas deepened the cleavage between western and central European countries. “It’s just worth remembering that Italy does not have a monopoly on Eurosceptic politicians. In Germany and the Netherlands there are also Eurosceptics waiting to exploit this issue.”

European leaders’ response will ultimately shape public opinion. When Italians felt they had been left alone by Europe in the early phase of the pandemic, confidence in the European project shrank. A poll conducted on 12-13 March found that 88% of Italians felt Europe was failing to support Italy, while 67% saw EU membership as a disadvantage - a remarkable result for a founding member state, where the EU once basked in high levels of support.