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European leaders say EU at risk of breaking up over coronavirus

by Karen Faulkner, Worthy News Correspondent

(Worthy News) – A former European Commission president has said the coronavirus crisis may result in the break-up of the European Union. In a rare statement last weekend, Jacques Delors said the lack of European solidarity in dealing with the crisis presented “a mortal danger” to the EU. Others have expressed similar concerns.

EU institutions have important powers that could have been used to coordinate a joint response to the crisis, but member states were seen to make their own decisions about key issues like shutting borders. Despite recent calls for closer union from some quarters, EU nations still retain sovereignty in areas that are central to managing a pandemic: healthcare, border control and fiscal policy.

According to Agata Gostyńska-Jakubowsk senior research fellow at the Centre for European Reform in Brussels, there was a limit to what the EU as an institution could do to in the face of this crisis. “The EU’s hands are pretty much tied in the area of public health,” Ms. Gostyńska-Jakubowska told the Financial Times. Nevertheless, she said, “an uncoordinated approach puts the whole single market in danger.”

Enrico Letta, a former prime minister of Italy, has stated the EU faces a “deadly risk” from the global pandemic. “We are facing a crisis that is different from previous crises,” he told the Guardian. Letta said this was partly because “Europeanism” had been weakened by earlier crises such as Brexit and the immigration crisis of 2015.

Nevertheless, although member states remain deeply divided over how to manage the economic meltdown resulting from the coronavirus, the Guardian reports that European leaders have managed to decide on a response to the outbreak that includes funding for vaccine research and the joint procurement of medical kit.