Europe : Time for Political Action - or the Risk of Disintegration

The column of the Italian ambassador to the EU in Politico on March 10^th prompted Ursula von der Leyen and Thierry Breton to seize the subject. It took them several days of intense pressure and threats of sanctions for obstructing free movement of goods within the EU to finally get the situation unblocked. The episode will leave deep scars beyond the Alps. On the other side, it leaves a bitter taste and the sad sensation of a missed opportunity that will never come again.

A million German masks eventually reached Italy, but this effort was half-hearted, and that is the problem. In fact, hasn't Europe already lost Germany? In her speech on Wednesday evening, March 18th, Angela Merkel addressed the German people directly on television for the first time since she took office, underlining the seriousness of the challenge awaiting her country and its historic character. She made no mention of the Italian plight and never uttered the word "Europe". On Twitter, this omission did not go unnoticed, including by some of her compatriots, who were disappointed by the lack of a European vision of the crisis in the Chancellor's speech. This is a good illustration of Germany's withdrawal, this gap in leadership at the heart of the European Union, which leaves it eminently vulnerable.

It was therefore - after having refused Italy's aid - in this way that France took the lead in obtaining a massive financial commitment from Berlin, the creation of a debt pooling mechanism, which represents the only life insurance policy against the disintegration of the eurozone. Europe is dancing again on the brink of the abyss. In Paris, it is the scenario that is feared as much as expected, the one that justified, after the Meseberg summit in June 2018, clinging to the tiny German concessions on the creation of a eurozone budget, as grounding for "the day when". On Tuesday March 17^th, contradictory rumours ran around about Angela Merkel warming up to the idea of a Corona-Bond, guaranteed by all European states, to allow Europe, and first and foremost Italy, to borrow enough to absorb the economic shock without endangering the financial stability of the eurozone. Is the door closed, half-open, or simply unlocked? With no doubt will the coming weeks see renewed European psychodramas and Franco-German tensions that have already reached, in recent months, peaks to which we have become dangerously accustomed.

Europe also needs to reach out to its neighbours, to whom the EU now refuses to export any medical supplies, offering a window of opportunity to those who, like Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic, are turning to China and proclaiming that "European solidarity is a children's tale that never existed". Who will still dare to talk about enlargement tomorrow, and continue to promise a European destiny, to those we have left alone in the face of the virus? And who will be able to claim to be interested in the conference on the future of Europe if its countries and citizens have not shown that they are there for each other at the moment of truth?

Without swift, political action, Emmanuel Macron's dream of "a sovereign Europe, a France and a Europe that firmly hold their destiny in their own hands", as mentioned on March 12^th, will have already gone up in smoke when we finally get to the "day after". We will blame a virus, or our neighbours, but we will not be able to forget our own responsibility, and a certain day in March 2020 when Italy asked Europe for help and nobody answered. Or, we will remember that the COVID-19 crisis was the moment when Europe, its leaders and its peoples, were able to live up to their historical responsibility and together overcome the ordeal that threatened to take them all away. It is up to us to write the page of European history that has just opened before us.

Copyright: Aris Oikonomou / AFP