politics explained

Coronavirus: The Covid-19 crisis has sidelined the European Union

As the pandemic worsens across the continent, nations are looking to their own government – and leaving Brussels out of the loop, writes Sean O'Grady

Tuesday 31 March 2020 20:31 BST
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The Schengen passport-free system has been suspended in part. Free movement of goods and people is but a memory
The Schengen passport-free system has been suspended in part. Free movement of goods and people is but a memory

It is probably not the European Union’s fault, to be fair, that the coronavirus has left the institution somewhat sidelined. Whether that near-irrelevance in recent days leads to a longer-term weakening is an increasingly open question.

It is natural at a moment of crisis that a nation’s citizens look to their own governments. Public health, the armed forces and fiscal policy, the three areas the crisis has most affected politically, are still, to a very large extent, matters for the member states alone. Each country has had to face its own challenges. None has done so entirely alone – there has always been an international dimension to the crisis – but critical decisions have been made in national capitals.

Thus, to take an as-ever extreme example, the prime minister of Hungary, Viktor Orban, has arrogated emergency powers to himself, establishing a virtual dictatorship. With little reference to Europe, Emmanuel Macron declared France to be at war, and his aides compare him to the victor of the Great War, Georges Clemenceau. Less dramatically, Austria, the Czech Republic and some others insist on citizens wearing masks when shopping, while other countries are relaxed. On the whole, the countries with the highest mortality rates so far, Italy and Spain have had to fend for themselves.

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