Coronavirus means the EU will never be the same again

The European project was built on the idea of rendering future war among European states impossible. The EU is programmed to avoid armed conflict among its member states, a situation that would blatantly undermine its very essence. But who could have predicted that an epidemic would shake its foundations. In the space of a couple of weeks fundamental tenets of the EU project have received a body blow and may not recover from the coronavirus epidemic.

The European Stability Pact requires member states to respect a three per cent budget deficit. France was about to breach that anyway and has used Covid-19 as a cover to go much further, as will Italy, Greece and others. The Pact also requires states’ national debt to go no higher than 60 per cent of GDP. Many of the ‘northern’ states have respected that, whereas the ‘southerners’ have not. Italy and France were already at 130 per cent and 100 per cent respectively before the epidemic, but with full lockdowns those figures will soar.