The coronavirus crisis has exposed the truth about the EU: it's not a real union
The European Union has scraped through its latest crisis by the skin of its teeth. The past week has been a disgrace. When ministerial talks collapsed on Thursday over the plan for a “coronabond”, the reaction seemed terminal. Germans and Dutch insulted Italians and Spaniards. Italy’s prime minister, Giuseppe Conte, said his country faced an “economic and social emergency”, and the EU appeared not to care.
The Danes spoke of “a financial crisis on steroids”. The European commission’s vice-president, Frans Timmermans, predicted “the EU as we know it will not survive this”.
Finally a last-minute package was agreed, for €500bn of emergency loan finance. This was little more than an extension of the existing European stability mechanism, designed to help individual countries in short-term emergencies. Even then, it was a mere third of what the European Central Bank had said was needed, €1.5tn euros. What was specifically not agreed was any sharing of the economic burden of the pandemic across European treasuries in general. It was mostly more loans.
The reason was glaringly obvious, and as old as the EU itself. The northern European nations within the eurozone still do not trust the hard-pressed southern ones to spend money wisely and pay back their debts.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/apr/10/coronavirus-crisis-truth-eu-union-financial-rescue
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