If he recovery fund it represented a turning point in Europe’s ability to react to choc economic crisis caused by the pandemic, the near future of the Union and its leadership capacity in the post-Covid world are at stake on the management of the health crisis. “We have given a strong answer on the economic level but we stammer on the health level. And this risks rekindling the latent skepticism of populist parties towards Europe, the harsh confrontation with post-Brexit Britain, winner of vaccines, and accentuating the fragilities of political stability in various countries “, reflects Paolo Magri, director of ISPI who, together with Alessandro Colombo, oversaw the 2021 report of the Institute – The World at the time of Covid: the time of Europe? – which will be presented live tomorrow (Monday 29 March) streaming at 18 on the canals social and on the Ispi website in a round table which will be attended by Senator Emma Bonino, the secretary of the Pd Enrico Letta, the leader of the League Matteo Salvini, the director of Republic Maurizio Molinari and the president of Ispi Giampiero Massolo.
Europe came to the outbreak of the pandemic burdened by fractures and weaknesses that were only temporarily overshadowed by the health crisis: the divisions over the management of the migration crisis, the wound of Brexit, the democratic recession in some of the member countries, the inability to really build a common defense and foreign policy. The end of the pandemic will be a test case: will the Member States continue to act in random order or will they be able to build greater integration for common action on the economy, migration, defense of democracy?
“The appointment of the vote in its temporal succession in Germany (in autumn, ed) and in France (in 2022) it will be the litmus test of the end of the narcotic effect of the pandemic: if Europe has not put the health and economic crisis behind us, we could be faced with a maddened mayonnaise ”, says Magri.
The processes of “redistribution” of power on a global scale, accelerated by the pandemic, require instead a cohesive and strong leadership. “Europe, even more than with Trump, is under pressure in its external projection and in its positioning with respect to Russia and above all to China”, concludes Magri. “We would need that geopolitical Europe that this Commission had set as its primary objective and which we had seen in action on many trade negotiations and in the investment agreement with China last December: a Commission weakened by vaccines and a European Council in turmoil on doses are certainly not a good encouragement in this direction ”.
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