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PUBLISHED: 15:06 30 March 2020 | UPDATED: 15:06 30 March 2020

Rubn Garrido-Yserte

Heads of state and government attend a meeting of European Union (EU) leaders at the European Council headquarter in Brussels. (JOHN THYS/AFP via Getty Images)

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What the economic downturn that began in 2008 did not achieve, could be managed by a microorganism. The outbreak and spread of the virus SARS-CoV-2 and the COVID-19 disease it causes across Europe has revealed a previous illness that had been incubating in the European Union for years.

In their book, The Existential Crisis of Europe, Csar Molinas and Fernando Ramrez Mazarredo argue:

The last major financial crisis came close to breaking down the European Union, plunged its citizens into deep pessimism and encouraged populism.

The authors finish their book advocating the need to develop a true sense of belonging to Europe. Today, we find no sense of belonging in the European management of COVID-19.

The European Union has for years been in search of a way to surpass an old institution, the nation state. But the fight against COVID-19 is being waged at national, not European level.

No coordinated actions to tackle problems

The European Commission has limited its involvement, and member states have approached the outbreak individually. The Schengen agreement, which allows freedom of movement around much of the continent, has effectively been suspended. There has been a moratorium on the enforcement of the macroeconomic stability and balance of public accounts commitments. Brussels has merely let go, but done little else.

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It is no coincidence that the virus has concentrated in old Europe. Globalisation has taken it from the great factory of the world to the West, where it continued on its deadly path.

This virus confronts an ageing and suffering Europe, but also a European Union that is losing the race for technological leadership in a world suddenly fast-tracked to digital and remote solutions.

If the Asian management of the pandemic has taught us something, it is the importance of new technologies. The digital revolution is not only a source of progress and competitiveness led by China and the United States. It has proved to be fundamental when it comes to controlling the virus and giving instructions to the population. The mobile phone has been almost more useful than masks. But the EU has been found wanting in both cases.

Can we do better?

We have learned from other crises. Austerity measures have been relaxed and the European Central Bank has announced unprecedented measures. But monetary policy is not enough.

The forecasts of the Purchasing Management Index (PMI), an index of the prevailing direction of economic trends in the manufacturing and service sectors, published on March 24, shows three things:

COVID-19 has brought the largest drop in this index since records began; much greater than that experienced with the 2008 crisis.

It projects performance in the future worsening, indicating that the contraction may last longer than the initial shock if economic agents do not see adequate economic policy responses.

There is a strongly asymmetric impact between various European countries, in a very clear core-periphery pattern.

The usual question

Given these results, the usual question arises: how is monetary union going to handle such an intense shock? So far there has been no agreement on European fiscal policy, but it is absolutely necessary to start this conversation.

Jos M Gonzlez-Pramo, a former member of the executive board of the European Central Bank, and Mara Jos lvarez Gil, have written in depth on macroeconomic stability, integration and debt in the eurozone.

Much like Dani Rodrick in The Globalization Paradox: Democracy and the Future of the World Economy, they suggest that nation states have little room to carry out independent economic policies in a globalised world.

There is, they indicate, an incompatibility of maintaining national financial regulation and supervision policies with the monetary union and financial stability rules of the eurozone. National regulation framework entails a strong connection between the worsening of a countrys debt capacity and the situation of its own financial system.

Politically, national budgetary and fiscal policies cannot be maintained if a genuine monetary and banking union aspires to have democratic legitimacy. This is where we are now.

On the one hand, economic agents (the markets) expect clear and forceful responses from the authorities (including from those of the European Union). And they expect that the EU will anticipate events and prepare responses. However, when governments meet at EU summits, they speak and plan. But taking joint actions in fast moving situations often appears beyond them.

Questions that Europe does not want to answer

When future data of countries fiscal imbalances driven from direct spending caused by the management of the pandemic become public or when the fall in productive activity deteriorates public accounts, what will be the response of the European Union? Will the markets be calm when the financing needs of already heavily indebted countries increase and they try to place more debt? Will the risk premium return to startle our markets?

Today, there are only national responses to a global problem. And what Europe needs are community responses in all areas, including macroeconomics.

The European Union has relaxed the macroeconomic supervision mechanisms but still delays on making a decision on the risk sharing scheme: joint debt issuance, European coverage mechanisms and it is necessary to know how and who paid the pandemics bills.

European citizens deserve a European Union that protects them, not an absent zombie. Populism and Eurosceptic nationalisms lurk, and today, more than ever, a stronger and reliable EU is needed one that can react to crises more rapidly.

Rubn Garrido-Yserte is the director of the University Institute of Economic and Social Analysis at the Universidad of Alcal. This first appeared at theconversation.com

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See more here:
Coronavirus has revealed the European Union's underlying health issues | Latest Brexit news and top stories - The New European

The largest group in the European parliament has urged the UK government to do the responsible thing and extend the Brexit transition period, as coronavirus plays havoc with the timetable for an EU-UK deal.

The centre-right European Peoples party (EPP), which unites the parties of 11 EU leaders, including Angela Merkel and Leo Varadkar, issued a statement on Monday calling on the government to extend the Brexit transition beyond the end of the year.

Christophe Hansen, a MEP from Luxembourg who sits on the European parliaments international trade committee, said: Under these extraordinary circumstances, I cannot see how the UK government would choose to expose itself to the double whammy of the coronavirus and the exit from the EU single market, which will inevitably add to the disruption, deal or no deal.

I can only hope that common sense and substance will prevail over ideology. An extension of the transition period is the only responsible thing to do.

David McAllister, the German MEP who leads the European parliaments work on the future relationship with the UK, said the pandemic complicated an already very ambitious schedule. The ball is now clearly in the British court, he added.

Income subsidies

Direct cash grants for self-employed people, worth 80% of average profits, up to 2,500 a month. There are similar wage subsidies for employees.

Loan guarantees for business

Government to back 330bn of loans to support businesses through a Bank of England scheme for big firms. There are loans of up to 5m with no interest for six months for smaller companies.

Business rates

Taxes levied on commercial premises will be abolished this year for all retailers, leisure outlets and hospitality sector firms.

Cash grants

Britains smallest 700,000 businesses eligible for cash grants of 10,000. Small retailers, leisure and hospitality firms can get bigger grants of 25,000.

Benefits

Government to increase value of universal credit and tax credits by 1,000 a year, as well as widening eligibility for these benefits.

Sick pay

Statutory sick pay to be made available from day one, rather than day four, of absence from work, although ministers have been criticised for not increasing the level of sick pay above 94.25 a week. Small firms can claim for state refunds on sick pay bills.

Other

Local authorities to get a 500m hardship fund to provide people with council tax payment relief.

Mortgage and rental holidays available for up to three months.

Under the withdrawal agreement, the Brexit transition period ends on 31 December 2020, terminating British membership of the EU single market and customs union. But it can be extended for one or two years if both sides agree by 1 July.

The EU has made little secret it would back any extension request, but the British government continues to rule that out.

Responding to the EPP statement, a UK government spokesperson said: The transition period ends on 31 December 2020, as enshrined in UK law, which the prime minister has made clear he has no intention of changing.

The plea for extra time comes as British and EU politicians prepared to hold their first meeting to discuss putting in place the Irish Sea border. The Cabinet Office minister, Michael Gove, was due to hold a conference call with the European commissions vice-president, Maro efovi, on Monday to discuss how to implement the agreement on the Irish border. The pair were also due to discuss citizens rights, amid concern from campaigners that the coronavirus crisis would make it harder for European Union nationals in the UK to secure their status.

Those talks will not touch on the future relationship, amid rising doubts about the prospects for agreeing an unprecedented deal spanning trade, security and fishing rights by the end of the year.

British and EU negotiators had concluded only three and a half days of formal talks before the coronavirus struck Europe heavily. A second round due to be held in London earlier this month was scrapped, while next weeks talks seem unlikely to go ahead, despite previous hopes of running them by video conference.

British officials say they continue to explore video-conferencing. But its not a simple fix. Only about 10 to 20 people can take part in just one thematic topic for each side, making virtual talks complicated to organise when individuals are working from home. Talks may cover about 10 different themes.

The EUs chief negotiator, Michel Barnier, has the virus, while his UK opposite number, David Frost, has symptoms and has gone into self-isolation. Officials on both sides say they are in regular contact.

Read more:
Extend Brexit transition by years over coronavirus, UK told - The Guardian

BEREC, the European Union's telecommunication regulation agency, said today that no major internet congestion issues have occurred since the onset of the coronavirus (COVID-19) crisis.

The agency said that while the overall traffic on fixed and mobile networks has significantly increased, no major downtime was recorded across Europe caused by bandwidth exhaustion incidents.

The agency's statement today comes after several internet experts made gloom & doom predictions that internet infrastructure might not be able to cope with the increase in internet traffic as most consumers are now stuck in their homes as national quarantines are imposed across Europe.

"Network operators have been able to cope well with this additional traffic load," the Body of European Regulators for Electronic Communications (BEREC) said today in a press release.

The agency said that some issues with internet access have been "observed and mitigated," but they were deemed "local and temporary," and the incidents have not been considered to be out of the ordinary.

The agency lauded telecommunications operators in some members for implementing customer-friendly measures such as increasing the amount of mobile data in their subscription packages as a way to prevent users from exhausting their monthly caps.

Furthermore, BEREC said it noticed not only "a stabilisation in [internet] traffic," but also "a decrease in the peak traffic" in some EU member states.

BEREC credited this decrease on "traffic reducing measures" put in place by "some of the larger CAPs" -- a term the agency uses for internet content and service providers.

Two weeks ago, the agency formally asked video streaming services to reduce streaming quality for European users to prevent overloading EU internet architecture.

Netflix and YouTube were the first to agree last week and began delivering SD (standard definition) streams to EU users, instead of their regular HD (high definition) quality. YouTube eventually expanded the measure to all of its global userbase, and not just for the EU.

Amazon Prime Video, Disney+, and Facebook answered BEREC's call later in the week, and also capped video streaming quality for EU or all of their users.

Akamai, Microsoft, and Sony, although not approached by BEREC officials, also agreed to slow down video game downloads during peak hours to avoid congesting internet infrastructure when a new game was published, or a game update rolled out to millions of users.

However, some internet experts have also publicly criticized BEREC's call to action as needless panic. Multiple internet service providers have come out and said that the internet backbone was specifically built to moments like these and designed to sustain sudden and very large volumes of traffic [1, 2, 3, 4].

Read more:
EU: No major internet congestion issues have occurred since COVID-19 onset - ZDNet

Russian medical specialists have been filmed disinfecting a nursing home in one of the worst-hit areas of Italy's coronavirus pandemic crisis. Incredible video footage released by the Russian Ministry of Defence showed the Russian team working alongside Italians to disinfect the home for Italian old-age pensioners. This has exposed the EU's failure to help one of its own member-states which has become the hardest-hit country from the coronavirus outbreak.

Vladimir Putin agreed to send aid to Italy after speaking with Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte.

Soon afterwards, military planeloads of medical equipment including 600 ventilators, military virologists, and epidemiologists landed in Italy.

This contrasts with the silence and infighting from the European Union, which has failed to agree on a joint economic response to the crisis.

Last week, Germany, the Netherlands and Austria all rejected Italy's pleas for so-called "corona-bonds" as a way to cushion the economic blow of the pandemic.

George Galloway has condemned the EU for its inaction to help embattled Italy.

The former Labour MP said:"A non-socialist country is now receiving an influx of health workers from socialist Cuba, whose were supposed to hate. Whom the West has quarantined this past half-century or more.

"Russia, which may well be on the brink of a major coronavirus crisis itself, is sending its doctors and its medicines to Italy.

"Where is the European Union?"

Despite these denials, the EUs foreign policy chief Josep Borrell warned of a struggle for influence through spinning and the politics of generosity.

Senior EU diplomats claim the Russian assistance is a geopolitical move to extend Russian influence.

France and Germany were criticised by Italians after declining their request for medical masks and equipment during the initial outbreak.

Over the weekend, French President Emmanuel Macron warned Italy not to get "intoxicated" with Russian aid.

See the article here:
Russian experts wipe out COVID-19 in Italian care home as EU stands by and does nothing - Express.co.uk

The number of people infected with the coronavirus is increasing daily across Europe. The top political priority must be to take targeted measures to slow down infections, in order to protect high-risk groups and avoid overburdening health systems, write Anna Cavazzini and Petra de Sutter.

Anna Cavazzini and Petra de Sutter are MEPs for the Greens Group. Petra de Sutter is the chair of the Committee on Internal Market and Consumer Protection.

With solidarity between member states and a functioning internal market, we can guarantee that people are provided with the care they need, where it is most needed.

Europe will decide whether it stands together in solidarity. The European Union can now show its ability to better meet challenges as one, instead of when each acts alone.

The virus is not stopping at member states borders, nor do individual member states have the power to cope with this extraordinary European and global situation.

We must not reflexively relapse into a nation-state way of thinking and acting. We must remember existing common rules and solutions, develop them further, in line with the situation, and make use of the benefit of joint action.

The internal market is a key instrument to implement European solutions efficiently and show solidarity. While some member states have a strong position in the production of medical or pharmaceutical products, others rely on imports from their European neighbours.

The added value of the common market is that it ensures the supply of vital goods to people, and guarantees the independence of the EU, especially in times of crisis. It is precisely when European solidarity is called for that the fundamental freedoms of the internal market must not be undermined, but should be adapted to the situation.

Unfortunately, national measures in some member states do not at present follow the basic idea that the internal market and a common coordinated approach at European level bring added value for all.

When several countries restrict the export of life-saving medical goods such as respirators, protective clothing or gloves, European solidarity ends when it is most needed. If accession candidates such as Serbia are denied solidarity assistance from EU states, confidence in the European enlargement process is weakened.

The partial or total closure of borders in some member states does not contribute to effective control of the coronavirus either. Instead, tens of thousands of citizens from Baltic States have been stranded at the Polish-German border.

Temporary border controls in the Schengen area are legal for public health reasons, but unfortunately, all member states are now affected by the virus. In this respect, attempt to keep the virus out are not likely to succeed.

Green proposals for the European single market

Read the original here:
Strengthening EU cohesion with European responses to corona crisis - EURACTIV