Will the Coronavirus Tear Europe Apart?
EU leaders have warned that failure to agree a unified response to the pandemic could destroy the European Project
The coronavirus pandemic has ripped away the EU’s mask of unity and now poses an existential threat to the European Project.
Faced with the crisis, the EU’s member states have turned on each other and reopened the crudely sutured wounds of the financial crisis.
Then, as now, northern euro zone countries are being asked to bail out poorer, southern countries, who bridle against the north’s lectures on financial housekeeping.
The infighting was brutal enough to convince Jacques Delors, the former European Commission president and architect of the euro, to intervene.
The 94-year-old made a rare public warning that the lack of solidarity in the face of the virus posed a “mortal danger” to the EU.