Faced with the coronavirus, the time is for an urgent union ... but Europe does not seem to know it. It was one of the greatest Europeans, Jacques Delors, who sounded the alarm on Saturday. "The prevailing climate between heads of state and government and the lack of solidarity pose a deadly danger to the European Union", warned - by written declaration to AFP - the former president of the Commission Brussels (1985-1995). In the crosshairs of the 94-year-old sage, the 27 EU leaders, unable to jointly declare an economic and health war effort to confront each other.
Last Thursday, in fact, the videoconference at the top spread out the divisions about the issue of eurobonds - nicknamed coronabonds. Clearly, obligations allowing each member country, whatever the state of its finances, to borrow at preferential rates on the markets, since the powerful and solvent EU would be the guarantor. If the France of Macron and the Italy of Giuseppe Conte lead the battle, the blockage comes from the strict argentiers of the north, Germany, Netherlands, Austria…
"There are legal limits, this is not our plan"
In addition to the immobility, it is the state of mind of the leaders which disconcerts, between a Mark Rutte - the Dutch Prime Minister - teaching his peers and a German minister dismissing with a gesture contemptuous the calls for aid from the worst hit countries. And the European Commission, that MEP Sandro Gozi enjoins to take responsibility for coronabonds? "There are legal limits, this is not our plan", dryly ruled Sunday its president, Ursula Von der Leyen. In short, there is no guarantee that things will progress at the next videoconference ... at the risk of boosting the europhobic populists.
There are, however, some positive aspects to note. First, the EU has nevertheless shown itself capable of storing for a time its sacrosanct rule of 3% of public deficits. Then, on the ground, solidarity exists. Witnesses, these flights of A400 M from the Luftwaffe in Strasbourg or military helicopters in Metz to take patients from the Grand-Est region to German hospitals. Similar operations take place between Germany and Italy, in Bergamo in particular, and include other countries, such as Luxembourg or Switzerland (outside the EU but in Schengen).