Faced with Covid, Europe’s citizens demanded an
EU response – and got it
Luuk van
Middelaar
The pandemic finally brought into being a European
public, as we discovered that our health is a common concern
Wed 29 Dec
2021 08.00 GMT
March 2020:
an insidious virus seeds itself across the globe pitching tens of thousands in
the European continent into a life-and-death battle. Most European countries
secure their borders; millions of households lock their front doors. Hellish
scenes flash by, feeding fears of infection. In Europe a disaster is unfolding,
but there is no joint response.
The loudest
cry comes from Italy, hit by the virus early on. Appeals for help go unanswered
and bitter reproaches ensue. The EU is slow to react: the fact that Brussels’
institutions lack the “competences”, or formal powers, to act in the field of
public health impresses no one. When, soon thereafter, an economic depression
looms, prophets of doom start predicting the end of the EU.
Then the
union suddenly began to show a remarkable dynamism and resilience. The pandemic
led to mishaps, distrust and fierce clashes of all kinds, but it also mobilised
unforeseen forces and led to huge political shifts. In the summer of 2020, the
bloc’s presidents and prime ministers took two far-reaching decisions: the EU
would purchase vaccines centrally, and it would establish a massive coronavirus
recovery fund. There was no more talk about “competences”. The EU reinvented
itself. How was this possible?
During the
Covid-19 disaster, more than in previous crises, political decision-making
followed public demand for action. All citizens felt threatened in their own
bodies. The disease was nobody’s fault. This crisis was so overwhelming – the
strange lockdowns, the mass layoffs, the geo-medical “divide and rule” by China
and the US – that “Europe” had to do something in response. Pandemic despair
forced the union to assume a form it did not previously possess.
Day after
day, European societies counted and blessed the sick and the dead, tuned in for
televised proclamations by monarchs, presidents or prime ministers, sang from
balconies and applauded medical staff in the evenings. These were intensely
experienced moments of national belonging.
Stepping up
to act for the public, this is the response we demand from our political
leaders
At the same
time, neighbouring states grew closer than ever in their suffering, their
lockdown rules, their intensive-care policies and death rates. Leaving aside
pandemic empathy; observing other countries had its uses at home. The media
compared their own governments with others. Why was Austria testing more
aggressively than France? Why were more people dying in Britain than in Greece?
But in the
EU, with its single market, currency and shared borders, this went beyond mere
comparison. Decisions next door had direct repercussions on people’s lives.
What if Germany pumped billions into its own economy and Italy could not? What
if Sweden took a lax attitude to Covid and kept their borders open? What if
Hungary accepted a Russian vaccine? Some national publics were quick to say to
their neighbours: this decision of yours is our business too. Conversely,
several national leaders reached out to a broader, European public. This
interplay was new.
By
contrast, the financial storms of 2008 onwards had been calmed in top-down
ways. Governments, alarmed by central bankers and experts, had to convince
reluctant parliaments of the need for drastic decisions to save the banking
system and the currency. The public looked on, not having asked for anything.
The economic freedoms introduced by the Brussels machinery from 1957 onwards
were likewise bestowed from on high, as a favour, not extracted from below as a
demand. In the pandemic, however, primacy lay for the first time with the
public.
Acknowledging
the dynamism of the situation and stepping up to act for the public – these are
the responses we demand from our political leaders. Hence the condemnation of
the early Brussels defence. When history comes knocking, a lack of formal
powers is no excuse. What counts is the capacity shown in the situation at hand
to engage in “events politics”, meaning to identify and parry a shock affecting
all citizens, to improvise and persuade in the moment; and, by extension, to
anticipate events and increase the system’s resilience. Such cases do not
require legal competences but rather the acceptance of personal, political
responsibility.
Few leaders
were more keenly aware of this than Angela Merkel. The pandemic was the last
big European crisis of her 16 years as German chancellor, and her performance
was masterful. By Easter 2020 she could feel how faultlines were hardening, how
political fights over solidarity were flaring up between Europe’s north and
south. Daily she read reports of how Covid-19 was driving the heart of the
eurozone and its Mediterranean periphery apart economically (a risk for German
exporters). And so she decided on 18 May 2020, after thorough consideration, to
jump. On behalf of the Federal Republic, she assumed responsibility for a
€500bn EU coronavirus recovery fund, to be disbursed in the form of grants not
loans. Something that had remained taboo during the dangerous eurozone crisis
was suddenly possible.
Merkel
displayed a seismologist’s sensitivity to undercurrents and aftershocks in the
public sphere. This unique ordeal could produce heaves and landslips, abrupt
emotional eruptions. “Our country is dying,” the leaders in Rome and Madrid
told her – and so pandemic aid could not be conditional; that would be
humiliating. Nor was it possible to ignore the fact that the Italian public’s
trust in the union was plummeting, and for two out of three Italians leaving had
become an option.
Shifts in
the public sphere are pure politics. The outcome is not just the sum of
objective forces (such as a country’s trade balance, arsenal or technological
capabilities). They are also, indeed above all, a matter of humour and sentiment,
gratitude and rancour, memory and expectation, words and stories, expressed in
mostly unstable balances and changing majorities. Yet that is no reason to
dismiss the public mood as fickle. It can be read, felt and influenced.
Moreover, public opinion is capable of pushing aside or shattering many
supposedly objective realities, as became clear during the pandemic.
In March
2020, the Dutch finance minister Wopke Hoekstra made an insensitive proposal
that the European Commission should investigate the absence of financial
buffers in Italy and Spain. It was a rude swipe aimed at garnering applause
from the Dutch home audience, but it provoked boos and hisses from all over
Europe, and Hoekstra had to slink away, having misjudged the nature, size and
mood of his European audience.
Other
actors actively sought out a wider European gallery. Southern Europe revived an
old desire from the euro crisis: a call for the issuing of joint debt. It did
so classically, in a letter dated 25 March sent from nine government leaders to
Charles Michel, the president of the European council. Far more effectively,
several days later local politicians in Italy bought a full-page advertisement
in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung to appeal to the German public to support
“corona bonds”.
It is
sometimes claimed that because we don’t all speak the same language there is no
European public space. That is nonsense. Applause and catcalls are universally
understood. The public that politicians deal with consists of more than just
the voters whose verdict they submit to every few years.
During the
pandemic, the European public discovered its role. It became clear that our
lives and our health are a public matter. We want politicians who protect us,
save lives and chart a path to the future. This swelling emergency call drowned
out the usual whistling down of each Brussels initiative as unwelcome interference
in national affairs.
A European
res publica translated itself from formless task into political decision. At a
moment of great vulnerability, a pandemonic battle of words made the European
Union defend what its people hold most dearly, and gave it new political force.
Luuk van
Middelaar is political theorist and historian. This article is adapted from his
new book, Pandemonium: Saving Europe
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