Brussels Edition: Another Mess

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After bickering over Zoom for the past 15 hours, EU finance ministers this morning still struggled to agree on ways to mitigate the economic impact of the coronavirus. Instead of delivering a list of measures to tackle the blow, their emergency teleconference reignited divisions that plagued the bloc during the financial crisis, prolonging a paralysis which has cast doubt over the EU’s chances to weather the storm unscathed. In all fairness, the euro area does tend to only really decide in the eleventh hour. But with thousands of people dying and many more falling sick each day, this dissonance in the face of an acute threat is not a good look for Europe.