A Health Union and a red anti-crisis phone

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The European Union has spent the last 10 years jumping from crisis to crisis. The latest, a pandemic that has put the continent's public health systems in check, has caused the greatest recession in history and comes at a time of European integration when Member States have less and less appetite for reforms.

On March 2, 2020, the European Commission organized its first major press conference in Brussels on the Covid-19 crisis, with several hundred cases in Europe and the epicenter in Italy. A few weeks later, the European territory had already become one of the most affected areas in the world. The event was held in a tiny room in the EU Emergency Response Coordination Center, where several dozen journalists of different nationalities were crowding together to get answers. Then it was routine, today, a recklessness.

The EU was late to the crisis, it was slow, disorderly. In the face of panic, the governments of many of the 27 reacted by looking inward, unilaterally closing borders or holding back exports of medical supplies for fear of supply problems, against some Italy and Spain that were already suffering the consequences. The lack of coordination, solidarity and means at the beginning of the crisis showed that the Union was not prepared for the pandemic, either, and made a dent. The President of the European Commission, Ursula Von der Leyen intoned the mea culpa and offered excuses to Italy. "But saying 'I'm sorry' only counts if there is a change in behavior," the president warned.

Almost five months have passed since the worst point of the crisis . The Union has coordinated material purchases, redirected funds to support the hardest-hit countries and designed an extremely ambitious economic package in the hands of the Member States. The numbers of infections, hospitalizations and deaths are at a minimum. Containment measures to contain the spread of the disease have been relaxed, the borders opened, which has inevitably led to an increase in cases. The crisis is not over.

The new outbreaks worry both in Madrid and Brussels, as well as the possibility of a second wave. Last week, the Commission presented a roadmap to expand the scope of diagnostic tests, contact tracing and surveillance, to ensure the supply of medical supplies and medicines, strengthen health systems ... But largely These actions ultimately depend on national authorities. Public health competencies are in the hands of the Member States.

A recent survey by the European Parliament shows that a majority of the public believes that the EU should have more leeway to manage a catastrophe such as the coronavirus pandemic and also more means to mitigate its economic or social consequences. "The EU has learned that it has to be more rapid in response and more resilient in the face of future public health emergencies," Dolors Montserrat, leader of the Popular Party in the European Parliament, explains to EL MUNDO, which argues in favor of creating a kind of Health Union to guarantee better coordination and management of health crises. An idea that is almost unanimously shared by the groups in the Eurochamber.

"We must increase the capacity of our health systems, and establish contingency plans, an early warning system, and the strengthening of coordination within each country and between the different Member States," agrees the head of the socialist delegation, Javier Moreno. , which also insists on the need to strengthen the agencies and mechanisms for responding to existing diseases that have turned out to be insufficient.

The fund to reactivate the economy includes a modest budget item to strengthen Health systems but for a transfer of powers, "there is no appetite in the Member States , " admits the researcher from the Elcano Royal Institute Ignacio Molina. "That does not mean that coordination elements cannot be improved," adds Molina, who points to the possibility of creating a sort of red telephone that would allow emergency communication between capitals in the event of a catastrophe and a kind of low European alarm state. capital control including key issues such as borders.

"The pandemic has shown us that vulnerability is shared and that the answers must also be shared," says María Eugenia Rodríguez Palop, head of Unidas Podemos in the European Parliament. The deputy believes that the lack of powers could have been made up with political will. "Citizens expect Europe to respond, they want us to solve their problems, they do not pay attention to who has the powers," agrees Luis Garicano, head of the ranks of Ciudadanos.

In his memoirs, one of the founding fathers of the EU, Jean Monnet, wrote that "Europe will be forged in crises and will be the sum of the solutions adopted during those crises . " Changes to the Union rarely occur in dramatic ways, with unexpected script twists and fireworks. "The European Union is usually less spectacular as a political phenomenon," admits Molina. Reforms are slow, boring, with tough technical negotiations, weeks if not months of meetings and summits to change a paragraph, a comma, to accommodate the position of 27 countries with different interests and visions. The pandemic has been and is, above all, a health crisis but with the perception that the worst is over, the negotiation on the response to the socio-economic consequences of the emergency has clouded any discussion on a common health response. .

"Health is not in the sights of leaders right now. They are discussing other things like economic recovery, it is a human reaction," explains European Policy Center researcher Sophie Pornschlegel, who also adds that "the leaders of the EU has no incentives to advance European integration because its electorate is national. " A structural problem, together with the need for unanimity or the reform of treaties -a Pandora's box that few want to open-, to advance in certain areas. "It's easy to blame the EU and say that Brussels is doing nothing, but the problem is that we have deep structural problems that make it difficult to move quickly in the face of a crisis like this," adds Pornschlegel.

However, there are those who find optimism in the crisis. "Disasters can be catalysts that show what has long been said to be impossible is possible," says Palop, who defends the opportunity to question the Union's mantras on fiscal, monetary or energy policy. "I believe that the lessons of the 2008 crisis have been learned and that the responses are not comparable," says Garicano, who believes that Europe has advanced much faster this time, particularly in its economic response.

Community institutions have been in crisis management for a decade, from the financial one in 2008, which almost ruined the euro, to the migratory one in 2015 that threatened the existence of the free movement space and, of course, politics in 2016 with the departure of the United Kingdom, the first time that a country decided to leave the Union. They were all extremely dramatic, they were all a threat to the European project, but the changes came in droplets and, in some cases, half. The financial crisis opened the door to a still incomplete Economic and Monetary Union reform. The management of the migration crisis dynamited the Dublin system, but the reform of the common migration and asylum policy has been blocked in the Council for months. And the impact of Brexit remains somewhat unknown. With the pandemic, the EU faces the same ghosts again.

"We have had a poly-crisis in the last 10 years. Since the Lisbon Treaty (in 2008), there has not been much progress in European integration," explains Pornschlegel. European politics has been complicated in recent years. Those years when the Berlin-Paris axis was enough to move Europe forward are over. The Presidency of the Eurogroup or the negotiation of the recovery plan in an endless summit with the leaders confronted for days are a good example of this. "Running the EU right now has become very difficult," admits Ignacio Molina.

It was another founding father of the EU, Robert Schuman, who wrote that "Europe will not be done at once or in a joint effort: it will be done thanks to concrete achievements, which in the first place create de facto solidarity". The pandemic has once again highlighted both the need for strong European solidarity and the huge differences between Member States. It depends on the leaders to go down in history as another unspectacular yet decisive episode in the history of Europe.

One goal: to save the single market

One of the first measures that the European Commission put in place to support the economy during the crisis was the relaxation of Community Competition rules, to allow Member States to help their companies through massive public aid. But among the Twenty-seven, not everyone has the same fiscal capacity, so the measure has jeopardized fair play. A single country, Germany, accounts for the vast majority of aid authorized by the European executive. And this worries the little ones. Luis Garicano agrees that it is a challenge for the common market but not a death wound. "A balance must be sought between helping the productive sectors to generate employment and guaranteeing fair competition," says Dolors Montserrat. The countries most affected by the pandemic, especially Italy and Spain, are also those with the least room for maneuver. That is why it is "so bloody," says Palop, that they are the main beneficiaries of it, including the Netherlands, "those that hinder a plan and a budget that are essential so that this imbalance within the EU does not end the single market." . / BR

According to the criteria of The Trust Project

• Europe
• Italy
• European Comission
• European Parliament
• Ursula von der Leyen
• Coronavirus
• Covid 19

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