Coronavirus Has Exposed the EU’s Creeping Irrelevance
Europe’s nations were supposed to find a common identity and strength in unity. The pandemic has shown this to be a figment.
Not so inspiring.
Photographer: Kenzo Tribouillard/AFP
As the coronavirus pandemic continues, Bloomberg Opinion will be running features that consider the long-term consequences of the crisis. This column is part of a package on politics and government. For more, see Clive Crook on rethinking resilience, Mihir Sharma on the global failure to protect migrant workers and Jonathan Bernstein on whether the U.S. government can survive the next disaster.
Covid-19 was only just arriving from Asia when the European Commission, with the technocratic equivalent of fanfare, announced a “Conference on the Future of Europe,” to be kicked off in May. Now, of course, the various seminars, committees and working groups are in lockdown limbo. And the conference title suddenly seems exceptionally ill-chosen. For it raises the question: Does the EU, in the long term, even have a future?