Can the European Union Survive the Coronavirus?
Covid-19 strengthens the trend toward nationalism. That will have the effect of undermining the “supranational” EU
version of the refugee crisis of 2015-16. Back then, the EU also failed to find a united answer to the migrants. Instead, individual countries from Hungary to Austria unilaterally closed their borders. They subsequently balked at all attempts to reform Europe’s asylum laws. That’s why the EU still hasn’t fixed the system, and is facing round two of such turmoil. It’s been a similar story in the euro crisis, or really any European malaise.
Unless the EU’S leaders somehow rise to the occasion in this pandemic, one conclusion from Covid-19 by ordinary citizens will be that in a real pinch only their own nations can act quickly and boldly enough to deserve their trust. People like the quarantined Italians will drape their national colours, not the EU’S stars, over their balconies to signal where their primary solidarity lies.
All of this is, of course, especially disheartening for europhiles such as Ursula von der Leyen, the relatively new president of the European Commission. She was hoping to bring “Europe” closer to its citizens and make it more united and stronger in the context of the geopolitical clashes with China, Russia and the United States. But whether the challenge is migration, foreign policy or defence, Europe’s nations just can’t, or won’t, make their union “ever closer.”
Worse, every EU failure of action or solidarity is grist for the mills of populists, nationalists and eurosceptics, from Italy to Hungary, and even Germany. Their narratives already led one member state, the United Kingdom, to turn its back on the EU.
But for Europe to founder, it’s not even necessary for more countries to formally exit. Other blocs have disi ntegrated throughout history, from the League of Nations to the Confederation of the Rhine and the Holy Roman Empire before that. Some collapsed fast, others slowly. Each in their own tragic way, they simply became irrelevant.