How the Coronavirus Tests European Democracy

Reports about excessive use of emergency powers in Hungary, increased discrimination against the Roma people, and limitations on media freedoms have created widespread concern that the European responses to the coronavirus will shut down democracy itself. Now that the fog is lifting, initial worries about the pandemic’s negative effects on the health of democracy in Europe have largely not come true. New data show that most European democracies implemented emergency responses to the coronavirus without undermining liberal-democratic standards. The countries where these standards have been somewhat violated—Bulgaria, Hungary, and Poland—were already exhibiting declines in democracy before the pandemic.

What does it mean to respect democratic standards during an emergency? As UN experts highlighted at the beginning of the crisis, government responses must be “proportionate, necessary and non-discriminatory.” Thus, emergency measures may alter democratic institutions, rights, and proceedings only within certain boundaries. For example, while responses to the coronavirus may ensure physical distance by restricting freedom of movement and assembly, they may not infringe on certain fundamental rights like the right to life or freedom from torture.

Building on these standards, these authors developed eight criteria that signal violations of democratic standards in emergency procedures:

1. expansion of executive power without a sunset clause and oversight;
2. discriminatory measures;
3. violation of rights from which no derogation is permitted under the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights;
4. restrictions on media freedom;
5. limitations on electoral freedom and fairness;
6. disproportionate limitations on the role of the legislature;
7. disproportionate limitations on judicial oversight; and
8. arbitrary and abusive enforcement.

Using these criteria, we created a pandemic democratic violations index to assess the extent to which state responses to the coronavirus undermine democratic standards. The index uses a scale from 0 to 1, on which lower scores indicate fewer recorded violations of democratic standards in emergency measures (see figure 1).

Figure 1: Pandemic Democratic Violations Index for Europe, Mid-May 2020

Countries in Europe where violations have been the most severe are those where democracy was already eroding before the coronavirus crisis. The country that scores highest on the index is Hungary, with 0.375. The Hungarian parliament has given Prime Minister Viktor Orbán extensive powers to rule by decree without a specified end date. In addition, emergency measures include prison sentences for publishing fake news about the pandemic.

Next on the watch list is Poland, with a score of 0.125 due to the absence of an end date for its emergency measures and reports of some restrictions on media freedom. In Bulgaria, which scores 0.083, lockdowns have disproportionately affected neighborhoods of Roma people. Romania scores 0.083 on the index because of reports about occasional media restrictions and police abuse in enforcing curfew measures.

There have also been minor violations in other European countries that were not experiencing a significant democratic decline before the onset of the crisis. Malta scores 0.083 because its emergency measures do not specify an end date. In Cyprus, which also scores 0.083, the fight against the coronavirus has involved placing severe restrictions on the movement of refugees and asylum seekers. Greece scores 0.042 because of reports of violence by security forces against asylum seekers, human rights activists, and journalists. Other European countries have not registered confirmed violations of the abovementioned standards.

In many cases, governments have abandoned problematic policies in response to public pressure. For instance, in Spain, the media successfully pressured the government to hold live press conferences allowing diverse media outlets to take part and ask questions freely. In Poland, a problematic presidential election due to be held on May 10 was canceled amid fears of an uneven playing field.

In other cases, it is less clear whether contested practices really violate liberal-democratic standards. For example, the government of Romania shut down several websites, accusing them of spreading false information about the coronavirus. While such actions may limit freedom of speech and information, these websites may have contributed to disinformation and conspiracy theories, for instance by linking the coronavirus to 5G technology or falsely announcing that supermarkets were closing. Likewise, the measures in Cyprus to restrict the movement of refugees and asylum seekers reinforce the need for a deeper debate about where legitimate measures end and democratic violations begin.

In sum, three months after the beginning of the pandemic, European responses show that robust liberal democracies can effectively deal with crises like the coronavirus without jeopardizing democratic standards.

Moving forward, two factors are important for the continued well-being of democracy in Europe. First, governments must remove the emergency measures and restore all democratic freedoms as soon as possible once the crisis has abated. Second, governments must deal with societal processes that the pandemic has set in motion and that could undermine democratic stability in the long term.

Economic recessions are likely to augment social inequalities, which may raise support for illiberal populists. There is already evidence of a rise in toxic polarization across European societies between those who support restrictive measures against the coronavirus and those who do not believe in the danger of the virus. The first group is upset about the reluctance of the second to follow physical distancing orders, while those in the second group see any government regulation on the topic as an unjust infringement of their personal freedom. This potentially explosive cocktail risks undermining a key foundation of democracy: trust and public belief in the legitimacy of government actions.

Anna Lührmann is the deputy director of the Varieties of Democracy (V-Dem) Institute and an assistant professor at the Department of Political Sciences at the University of Gothenburg.

Amanda B. Edgell is a research fellow at the V-Dem Institute.

Sandra Grahn is an associate researcher at the V-Dem Institute.

Jean Lachapelle is a research fellow at the V-Dem Institute.

Seraphine F. Maerz is an assistant professor at the V-Dem Institute.

The coronavirus is set to go down in Europe’s history as a major catalyst for more—and a different kind of—integration. By dramatically highlighting the costs of uncoordinated responses to the spread of the virus and its many consequences, the pandemic has unveiled—more than any crisis before—some of the major flaws of Europe’s incomplete union.

The EU seems to have promptly addressed some of these flaws. After slow and piecemeal initial responses to the health crisis, the EU may now be rapidly moving toward the creation of a European health union, which would entail the transfer of national powers to the EU. When it comes to the coronavirus-induced financial crisis, the EU has responded with a major recovery plan, which would vastly increase the union’s annual budget and finance it through new EU taxes, such a digital tax, a tax on plastic, or even a tax on access to the EU’s single market. These are taboo-breaking developments.

Yet behind the health and financial crises caused by the coronavirus lies a deeper and overlooked democratic emergency that predates the pandemic. As the EU’s political influence over citizens’ lives has grown significantly, their expectations for influencing EU policy have also expanded. However, this demand remains largely unmatched by the reality.

The coronavirus has further exposed this mismatch between the EU’s impact on citizens’ lives and their ability to shape EU action. Sharing the dramatic experience of being confined to their homes, millions of Europeans have been directly affected by the lack of coordination and solidarity among EU member states in response to the pandemic. The patchwork of uncoordinated national measures has already cost lives and damaged livelihoods.

In part to address the EU’s long-standing democratic problem, in June 2019, the then president-elect of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, announced a Conference on the Future of Europe. The two-year conference was supposed to be launched on May 9, 2020, but has been postponed. Contrary to conventional wisdom, it is not the coronavirus that prevented its kickoff but the absence of an agreement among the European Commission, the Council of the EU, and the European Parliament about the conference’s aims, scope, and methodology. While the coronavirus is a compounding factor behind the delay, it provides a major opportunity to rethink whether and how this conference may be a catalyst to reimagine the relationship between citizens and the union.

Although reminiscent of the ill-fated 2003 Convention on the Future of Europe, which drafted an EU constitution that was never ratified, the new conference does not directly aim to execute treaty changes. Rather, it is meant to be a preparatory process that could lead the European Council to initiate those changes. Crucially, however, this time the conference is supposed to be a more bottom-up exercise in which European citizens are listened to and their voices contribute to debates on the future of Europe.

The aims of the conference continue to increase—and are highly contingent on the latest political developments. The initial goal was to adopt a new EU electoral system to redefine the way the union’s top leaders are appointed. An additional aim was to use citizens’ assemblies to deliberate on a set of predefined policy areas, from the climate crisis to the digital revolution. In a post-coronavirus Europe, it would be no surprise if a new major mission for the conference were the creation of a European health union—something that several European commissioners and members of the European Parliament have called for.

When it comes to the conference’s methodology in ensuring citizens’ involvement, two major proposals have been put forward. The European Parliament’s blueprint proposes that citizens’ agoras, comprising 200 to 300 randomly selected, demographically representative participants, meet across the EU to discuss policy issues defined by the union. These citizens will have no agenda-setting power, and their opinions will not bind the conference’s plenary, which will be composed predominantly of members of the European Parliament and of other EU institutions. The European Commission’s proposal is less detailed and refers instead to largely undefined “well-established citizens’ dialogues.”

However, the new commission president promised the conference without first securing the support of the member states. Only a few EU countries have committed to getting the conference off the ground. What is more, the initiative risks monopolizing the conversation about democratic reform. Indeed, the mere prospect of such an initiative has had the effect of slowing, not accelerating, democratic renewal across Europe.

Still, the conference seems more necessary than ever before. To break the EU’s impasse of democratic reform, numerous civil society groups have proved more vocal and united than usual in asking to be directly involved in co-designing and co-organizing this democratic exercise. This is in stark contrast to the approach of mainstream nongovernmental organizations, which remain more interested in gaining a seat at the table than in redesigning the table.

As the antagonistic nature of some civil society initiatives has highlighted, postponing the conference provides a unique opportunity to rethink the initiative entirely. It is time for EU institutions to go back to the drawing board and come up with a more meaningful, sophisticated format that captures the unprecedented vivacity and readiness of EU civil society to engage with the union. What better way to do this than by outsourcing the exercise to civil society itself?

The conditions under which any form of citizens’ deliberative assembly is to be designed today are exceptional. This endeavor should combine the random selection of participants from across the union, multilingualism, and online connections. Despite having some experience with each of these forms of deliberation, the EU has yet to invent a model that can effectively combine all of these features at once. Yet this is the level of ambition required for this initiative. Time for Europe to get to work!

Alberto Alemanno is the Jean Monnet professor of EU law at the École des hautes études commerciales (HEC) in Paris and the founder of The Good Lobby.

A wave of civic resilience is sweeping across Europe. From online protests to symbolic messaging within the confines of physical distancing, activists are finding creative ways to fight back against perceived injustices amid restrictions to stop the spread of the coronavirus. The extent to which civil society can succeed in these efforts will determine what kind of Europe emerges from the pandemic.

In Poland, activists protested against proposed bills that would curb abortion and sex education. The country is no stranger to pushback from feminist movements: mass protests over abortion rights took place in 2016 and 2018. This time around, public assemblies are banned. But that did not stop activists in Warsaw from forming a line outside a store, where they stood 6 feet apart with face masks and held up placards to express their opposition to the bills. Activists also conducted an uninterrupted eight-hour online protest.

In Germany, online protests organized by refugee solidarity group Seebrücke under the hashtag #leavenoonebehind attracted 6,000 people, who called for Europe to support refugees. Meanwhile, young climate activists collected over 1,000 placards from across Germany and laid them out near the federal parliament to remind the government of the climate crisis.

In the Netherlands, the global environmental movement Extinction Rebellion protested by filling the square in front of the Dutch parliament in The Hague with 1,000 shoes from climate activists. Across Europe, young climate activists have taken their climate change protest movement Fridays for Future online with Talks for Future webinars.

Unfortunately, the pandemic has not loosened restrictions on civic space. On the contrary, while states have introduced emergency laws, national lockdowns, and limits on public gatherings, restrictions on civic space have intensified in many cases. The CIVICUS Monitor, which tracks civic space across the world, has compiled some alarming global trends during the coronavirus pandemic. These include unjustified restrictions on access to information and censorship, crackdowns on human rights defenders and media outlets, violations of the right to privacy, and overly broad emergency powers.

Europe has witnessed many of these tendencies. Many European states have passed emergency laws to tackle the pandemic. However, there is concerning evidence that countries with autocratic traits have grabbed the opportunity to curtail freedoms with both hands. Hungary is the most widely covered example of this: a new law adopted on March 30 extended the government’s power to rule by decree, allowing it to prolong emergency measures and evade parliamentary scrutiny. In the UK, civil liberties groups have labeled the Coronavirus Act, which suspended the right to assembly for two years from March 2020, “draconian.”

Many European countries have also seen threats to media freedom through censorship, including smear campaigns, the criminalization of fake news, or restrictions on access to information. Censorship is not a new threat in the region: the CIVICUS Monitor’s “People Power Under Attack” reports documented censorship as the number one violation in Europe in 2018 and 2019. But CIVICUS’s evidence shows that states are using the pandemic as a pretext to restrict media freedom further.

Censorship in the Czech Republic and Spain has taken the form of governments initially preventing journalists from attending press conferences or asking questions, silencing critical opinions of the government, or only recognizing government sources as credible. In Bulgaria and Hungary, the spread of fake news about the virus is a criminal offense that could result in journalists facing a fine or imprisonment. The government of Romania has introduced provisions under a state of emergency to remove false information from the public domain.

The World Health Organization has said that alongside the pandemic, it is also fighting an “infodemic”—an oversupply of both accurate and inaccurate information. There is a concern that what is considered fake may be open to interpretation by governments, some of which have not shied away from censorship in the past. In Hungary, before the bill allowing rule by decree was passed, Prime Minister Viktor Orbán’s government and the pro-government media accused independent media outlets of spreading “fake news” when reporting that Hungarian doctors and nurses lacked proper personal protective equipment.

A tug-of-war between restrictions and resilience is playing out in Europe. On the one hand, greater restrictions on civic space point toward a Europe that may emerge from the pandemic more fragile and, in some cases, more authoritarian. On the other hand, stories of resilience suggest a future of optimism, in which activists and civil society organizations are stronger than before.

Aarti Narsee is a civic space researcher at CIVICUS.

In recent decades, there has been a dramatic expansion of technocratic modes of governance. Powers that were previously held by national parliaments have been ceded to courts, central banks, and supranational institutions. This shift was, in part, a deliberate move by national governments to regulate highly technical policy areas and maintain price stability. It was also, in part, a consequence of hyperglobalization and the proliferation of international treaties and organizations in the past forty years.

What is generally called populism can be understood as a response to this expansion of depoliticized forms of decisionmaking. As technocratic governance has expanded, it has led to a backlash—as Dutch political scientist Cas Mudde has put it, “an illiberal democratic response to undemocratic liberalism.” The rise of populism, in turn, leads to the further expansion of technocratic governance as elites seek to insulate decisionmaking from politicians who are perceived as irresponsible or irrational. In short, there is a symbiotic relationship between technocracy and populism.

In Europe, there is a particularly acute version of this symbiosis—not least because of the EU, which is perhaps the ultimate experiment in technocratic governance. In a sense, depoliticization is the essence of what the EU does. This symbiosis between technocrats and populists plays out along the fault line between pro-Europeans and euroskeptics. In recent years, the momentum seemed to be with the populists, as the much-used metaphor of a wave suggested.

However, the coronavirus has created what might be called a technocratic moment. In this crisis, there is a clear need for executive competence and expertise—and in recent months, many have argued that this discredits populism. For example, the EU’s foreign policy chief, Josep Borrell, wrote in April that the pandemic “brings the importance of a rational approach, expertise, and knowledge into sharp focus—principles that the populists mock or reject as they associate all of those qualities with the elite.”

Much of the foreign policy establishment in Europe is sympathetic to technocratic governance. Many foreign policy experts now feel vindicated and seem to hope that after the populist surge of recent years, the coronavirus will lead to a kind of technocratic surge. Nathalie Tocci, the director of the Italian Institute of International Affairs and an adviser to Borrell’s predecessor, Federica Mogherini, hopes that the current crisis will result in a “return to trust in expertise and more rational government.”

Clearly, there is a place for experts in policymaking. But even in the current acute health crisis, decisions that are based on science should be subject to democratic contestation. Future questions about how to deal with the public debt that has accumulated as a result of the crisis will be even more political than decisions about imposing and lifting lockdowns.

In other words, the problems with technocracy will quickly come back into sharper focus. In particular, the question of the legitimacy of EU-level decisions will likely become more acute. A May 2020 ruling by the German Constitutional Court on the European Central Bank’s bond-buying program illustrates how economic policy is being made, to a large extent, by two institutions over which elected politicians have little sway. This has the potential to create another populist wave, even bigger than the one Europe has just experienced.

The political shocks produced by the rise of populism have forced Europe to recognize and begin to deal with the problems of technocratic governance. In particular, populism has shown that a new balance is needed between what Irish political scientist Peter Mair has called “responsive and responsible government.” If, after the coronavirus, Europe doubles down on technocracy, it would mean unlearning the lessons of the last few years and deepening, rather than resolving, the crisis of liberal democracy in Europe.

Hans Kundnani is a senior research fellow in the Europe Program at Chatham House.

The coronavirus pandemic has amplified the vulnerabilities of a digitally interconnected world. The restrictive measures introduced at the beginning of the crisis have accelerated the digitization of a large part of the European population, which has been forced to reorganize its work, education, and leisure online. This digital shift has manifested itself in ways that range from so-called Zoom diplomacy to hyperconnected home offices, from virtual classrooms to video calls with family and friends.

At the same time, the global positions of tech companies like Amazon or Google have further strengthened. Facebook’s traffic has skyrocketed, with a big surge in video calls and messaging. Microsoft announced in March that the number of people using its software to aid remote working had increased by nearly 40 percent in a week.

As Europe’s digitization has quickened, the information asymmetry—in which, for a long time, large tech corporations have known more and more about us while we have known little about them—has widened. And this is not the only imbalance that has intensified. The asymmetry of what is possible for those with internet access and those without has also increased. This adds to already growing inequalities and turns the physical distancing imposed for health reasons into deeper social distancing.

In Spain, 91.4 percent of households have access to the internet, mostly through smartphones. But among households with net monthly incomes below €900 ($1,011), the minimum wage in the country, the figure is only 58.1 percent. According to the UK’s Office for National Statistics, about 4 million Britons do not use the internet at all.

Europe is the world region with the highest percentage of people using the internet, at 82.5 percent; but in certain EU countries, such as Bulgaria, Greece, Italy, and Romania, almost a quarter of the population never uses internet services. The situation is similar in the United States, where four out of ten households do not have a broadband connection.

In the context of the socioeconomic shocks triggered by the coronavirus, some national and local authorities in the EU have launched initiatives to try to tackle this exacerbated digital exclusion. The city of Milan, on the front line of the Italian emergency response, provided free internet access to vulnerable families. Barcelona’s government distributed thousands of laptops and tablets with internet connectivity to students in vulnerable situations. Across Spain, municipalities of all sizes set up similar initiatives that connect public and private stakeholders to alleviate social segregation at a time of urgent need and extreme vulnerability.

At the same time, technology has been used to mobilize civil society to collaborate on the production of emergency supplies to make up for relief shortages. An open-source platform, Coronavirus Makers, connected a large network of technology experts, researchers, developers, engineers, companies, and institutions across Spain to create products such as ventilators for intensive care units, visors, or masks to help fight the pandemic.

The organizational transformations of recent months will also be decisive in terms of how people relate to technology in the near future. In a context of new types of surveillance, mobility tracking, and information integration, cities around the world have mobilized during the pandemic for more inclusive digitization. In the spirit of building tech trust, the Cities Coalition for Digital Rights—launched in 2018 to secure a people-centered digital reality—has called for better handling of technology during the pandemic. They have mobilized in favor of data privacy, consent, trust, and a limited and responsible use of technology as a tool to contain and resolve the coronavirus crisis.

It is more necessary than ever for the EU, national governments, and city administrations to get their digital democracy strategies right. This is vital not only to address the dominant positions of tech companies but also to protect citizens’ rights and use the pandemic as a prompt for more inclusive participation. Otherwise, the implications for democracy could be dire.

Carme Colomina is a research fellow on the EU, disinformation, and global politics at the Barcelona Centre for International Affairs (CIDOB).

Since the first reports of an outbreak emerged from Wuhan, China, the world has fixed its gaze on the coronavirus. The virus has spread with unprecedented speed and global reach, and authorities have mobilized resources in an effort to contain it. But hidden within the pandemic is another struggle—one arguably as dangerous as the virus itself: a struggle for the hearts and minds of people who will shape the future health of European democracy.

During the pandemic, various political forces have sustained communications assaults on the public. As the security and intelligence services of some EU member states have reported, individuals and groups at the extreme ends of the political spectrum have used the pandemic to spread what the World Health Organization has called an “infodemic.” This includes misinformation, divisive and hateful speech, and attacks on information systems, and its effect is to weaken the foundations of European democracy.

Drawing from European Movement International surveys, it is possible to distinguish four trends that underpin this phenomenon. First, actors have been spreading disinformation about the coronavirus pandemic to undermine scientific advice and cause confusion. Second, some actors have been attacking the information systems of institutions such as the EU and the World Trade Organization, national governments, and even schools and medical systems. The intention of this type of attack is to undermine established institutions and sow mistrust and resentment toward them.

Third, some actors have been seeking to divide societies and pit people against one another by using race and class as instruments of polarization and blaming the spread of the virus on specific ethnic or social groups. And fourth, some actors have been creating a sense of fear and hopelessness, focusing on negative messaging about the pandemic and framing it in ways that make citizens doubt they can protect themselves within European democratic systems.

As European governments struggle to respond to the health emergency and the recession brought on by the coronavirus, these actors have taken the crisis as an opportunity to misuse information and exploit vulnerabilities to further their own objectives. The resulting combination of disinformation, mistrust, division, and disempowerment enables those driving the infodemic to weaken the individuals and institutions that underpin democracy in Europe.

Governments have begun to respond to these worrying trends, but only to a modest degree. Their communications about the pandemic must be more tightly calibrated to address the dangers of the infodemic and protect European democratic actors, organizations, and procedures. Governments, institutions, academics, civil society, the media, and citizens—in short, all who make up Europe’s democratic ecosystem—have a role to play in this.

Politicians and policymakers must focus on sharing accurate and accessible information consistently. Open and transparent communication of reliable information about the virus, containment measures, and strategies to reopen society will help governments and institutions rebuild the trust of their citizens. Communications about the pandemic should aim to showcase the important roles played not only by those who provide frontline public services, such as emergency and health workers, teachers, chefs, cleaners, and garbage collectors, but also public officials and civil servants tasked with designing and coordinating the responses to the crisis.

Governments and other actors need to put their emphasis on unity, harmony, and the importance of political inclusion. Governmental and institutional messaging about the pandemic has so far neglected the vital importance of other pillars of European democracy, such as a strong civil society and independent media. Governments and EU institutions will need to do a lot more to highlight the crucial roles that civil society and the media have taken on to fill information gaps, serve parts of society unreached by governments, and find innovative solutions to help European communities through the pandemic.

As the EU continues to fight the coronavirus and takes cautious steps to reopen, the union must also protect itself and its democracies against the dangers of false, hateful, and divisive information.

Petros Fassoulas is the secretary general of European Movement International.

If Western media are to be believed, Germany has dealt exceptionally well with the coronavirus crisis. In the context of U.S. President Donald Trump’s ineptitude and the higher death rates in other big Western democracies, Germany is held up as an example of how to do better. But with whom is Germany being compared?

If Western countries’ responses are compared with those of Asian democracies, the West has failed as a whole. South Korea and Taiwan were confronted with the coronavirus much earlier than the West, yet they managed to keep their infection numbers low while avoiding the extensive economic standstill that afflicts Europe.

Germany has been part of this failure as much as any other Western country. The German government’s lead disease control agency, the Robert Koch Institute, kept the risk level of the coronavirus at low to medium until late February. Two weeks later, the country closed down. The institute’s experts managed to test and systematically trace a small early outbreak, but they were surprised when carnival festivities triggered a major wave of infections in late February. After that, their approach of systematic tracing and tracking was overpowered within days.

Germany looks better when its numbers of coronavirus cases and deaths are compared with those of European countries with similar-sized populations, such as Italy and the UK. France has a similar infection rate but a higher death rate. But population size does not make for a relevant comparison: the relative infection and fatality numbers are what counts. Looking across the EU, the whole of Central and Eastern Europe has better numbers than Germany. Finland and Greece have done much better, while Austria has done somewhat better. Denmark’s numbers are similar to Germany’s.

The Robert Koch Institute is not the only institution that was slow to react. The German authorities also were not particularly fast at the beginning. Italy stopped all flights from China on January 31, but Germany waited another two weeks before doing the same. Overall, German timing has been average compared with other EU countries. The lockdown was not severe, nor were Germans particularly disciplined. Cell phone data show that Germans reduced their movement less than others.

The New York Times and the Financial Times praised German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s leadership and deference to science. This may seem unique given Trump’s incomprehensible announcements, but it is not special in the EU. Almost all of the union’s political leaders have spoken about the science behind the pandemic and government measures and have regularly explained the situation.

What is more, the German government’s communication, while clear in the first two weeks of the crisis, lost its clarity around Easter, when Berlin tried to explain what it wanted to achieve next. The government successively presented different parameters—from the replication rate to the reproduction number and regional data—as essential, and no written explanation of the government’s aims was ever published. Key indicators, such as the number of tests administered, differed depending on who was asked.

Official reporting has lagged several days behind real time, and leading news media have used data released by Johns Hopkins University, which in turn derives its numbers from German media and local authorities. For a while, the government claimed—implausibly—that wearing face masks did not reduce the infection risk. Later, it turned out that this was an effort to keep public demand low until there were enough masks for the country’s healthcare workers.

Many things have gone wrong in Germany, as they have in most countries. But a number of things have gone well. Germany has had a significant excess capacity of intensive care beds since the beginning, and testing has been widespread. A lot more research will be needed to understand why the country’s infection and fatality rates have been better than those in France, Italy, or Spain. Is it due to Germany’s high level of testing? Or is it due to luck, because most of those infected early on were younger people coming back from skiing vacations? Or is it due to Germany’s smaller households? Nobody knows yet.

Democracy has disproved the cliché that only autocratic regimes can take decisive action. The city of Berlin built a 500-bed hospital in a few weeks—and did so without propaganda fanfare, in contrast to China. This crisis has shown that democracies can make tough decisions. Such accomplishments are not specific to Germany, however. They are shared across EU member states.

The response to the coronavirus has gone reasonably well in Germany, but singling out the country with exaggerated praise risks inflating a sense of exceptionalism that does not reflect the reality. The idea that Germany has done much better than others is now widespread in the country itself, too. Germany’s chief virologist claimed that Germany had “achieved something that no comparable country achieved.” This is not a position that invites learning and better preparation for future crises.

Germany has also seen some of the biggest demonstrations in Europe against coronavirus-related restrictions. This situation may fuel more of the extreme polarization that has emerged in the country in recent years. The far-right political party Alternative for Germany (AfD) is already trying to capitalize on fundamental opposition to the government measures, although the party’s credibility is low: in early March, it criticized the government for not closing down fast enough. Also, with Germany’s sixteen federal states now deciding on different levels of lifting restrictions, it is difficult to keep blaming the federal government.

In sum, despite a relatively competent government response to the crisis, there are political trends that need careful attention in Germany. Any sense of German exceptionalism is unlikely to help address these trends in ways helpful to democratic quality.

Michael Meyer-Resende is the executive director of Democracy Reporting International in Berlin.

In authoritarian-populist Hungary, concerns over democratic regression amid the coronavirus pandemic are a whole level higher than in other EU member states. On March 30, the Hungarian government introduced an emergency law that gave extraordinary powers with no time limit to the prime minister. Although Prime Minister Viktor Orbán’s government withdrew the emergency law on June 16, most of its provisions have been carried over into new regulations. Increasingly, the prime minister can run the country without any meaningful constitutional control over his decisions.

The first law was the most draconian introduced in Europe in response to the coronavirus—even though the pandemic has not hit Hungary as hard as most other states in the region. Even before the new law was introduced, Freedom House had downgraded the country’s democratic status: Hungary can no longer be called a democracy and is the first “hybrid regime” in the EU.

Under the provisions enacted in response to coronavirus, the government has withdrawn financial resources from local administrations and placed important state companies under partial military supervision. Pro-government public television has tightly controlled information about the disease. Questions at government press conferences are preselected and censored.

More widely, propaganda campaigns against feminism and what right-wing politicians have called “gender ideology” have moved into a higher gear. Members of the ruling Fidesz party have found time to carry on their culture wars even in the context of a global pandemic. Government vitriol against Brussels and many mainstream European politicians has also moved up a level.

This dire situation has been well covered internationally. A more difficult emerging question is whether Orbán has now overstepped the mark so far that his latest power grab may begin to backfire.

The government’s mismanagement of the state healthcare system has become more apparent. There was an outcry when the health minister ordered elderly patients who were grievously sick with conditions other than the coronavirus to be sent home from hospitals. Another backlash ensued against a vicious and orchestrated propaganda campaign by the government that claimed that Gergely Karácsony, an opposition politician and the mayor of Budapest, was responsible for deaths in a guesthouse.

Misusing a new law that penalizes the spreading of fake news, a Fidesz mayor denounced one of his rivals, who was detained in the early morning by police after criticizing the government’s management of the crisis. Although the opposition party activist was released later the same day and the Hungarian justice minister called the detention a mistake, nobody apologized. The chilling effect of citizens’ growing fear might be an increasing level of self-censorship on the internet.

Polarization and antiregime feelings in Hungary are intensifying. On May 2, the opposition boycotted the official celebration for the thirtieth anniversary of the opening of the country’s postcommunist democratic parliament. Realizing the shock he had provoked, the prime minister felt compelled to keep the legislature functioning, at least in formal terms. In the European Parliament, an increasing number of members of the European People’s Party—the European umbrella group that includes Fidesz—are pushing for the Hungarian party to be ejected.

Hungary is not yet a full-fledged dictatorship: there is still room for dissent. This is evident in the wake of the coronavirus and the provisions that replace the emergency law. The political system has not only hard authoritarian elements but also more fluid political practices. The regime holds back from using the full array of formal laws it now has at its disposal to crush opposition voices and civil society.

In a best-case scenario, a more united Hungarian opposition might take advantage of the new context. The main battlefield in Hungary remains that of identity politics. This is probably a more important factor than the coronavirus and will unfold in ways that are somewhat independent of the pandemic. Nonpopulist politicians still need to seduce the electorate with rational policy proposals and a more positive, pro-European alternative to Orbán. So far, they have been successful with elections in cities but have failed to convince the majority of citizens in the countryside. Sharp polarization is probably a greater enemy to democracy in Hungary than the coronavirus.

István Hegedűs is the chairman of the Hungarian Europe Society.

Attempts at containing the coronavirus pandemic have provoked discussions about which political systems are best at handling health crises. Undemocratic countries seem well equipped to impose lockdowns and enforce physical distancing, while robust democracies tend to do better in terms of ensuring transparency, safeguarding access to information, and coordinating the efforts of state and civil society actors.

During the coronavirus outbreak, Poland, which Freedom House categorized in its “Nations in Transit 2020” report as a semiconsolidated democracy, has found itself at a tipping point between flawed democracy and mild authoritarianism. In the country’s deeply polarized political system, the institutions of liberal democracy, such as an independent judiciary, have already been undermined. Recent political developments have shown that such divided systems are at serious risk of further democratic backsliding during the pandemic.

The Polish government’s initial decision to swiftly impose a strict lockdown was greeted with understanding and supported by most Poles. In an opinion poll by Ipsos in mid-March, 71 percent of respondents backed the government’s response to the pandemic.

But this initially favorable reaction quickly gave way to mistrust and even anger. The government failed to provide clear justifications for further restrictions. Efforts to contain the virus laid bare the deficiencies of an underfunded healthcare system. And the ruling party kept pushing to hold a presidential election on May 10 despite widespread concerns among the population. In a poll by the Political Cognition Lab of the Polish Academy of Sciences, conducted March 20–23, the only group in society that provoked stronger negative feelings than the government were the people who were deliberately breaking the rules aimed at containing the pandemic.

The government was determined to simultaneously impose a strict lockdown and hold a presidential election regardless of serious health and legal concerns. This dissonance was one of the main drivers of dissent from both the parliamentary and nonparliamentary opposition. Accusing the government of a blatant power grab, the presidential candidate of the largest opposition party, Civic Platform, threatened to boycott the election.

Many local authorities announced that out of concern for citizens’ well-being, they would not help with the work of Poland’s electoral commission. In response, the government tried to pass a new law and enforce universal postal voting. Again, numerous local authorities protested and declared their intention to withhold registers of voters from the post office.

If it were not for strict physical distancing measures, tampering with a democratic election would probably have provoked massive street demonstrations. When, in the years after its 2015 election, the Law and Justice government undermined the independence of Poland’s constitutional court and supreme court, thousands of people across the country protested. In 2020, protests have been held mostly on the internet, with the notable exception of Alarm Signal to the Government. This protest action, supported by a coalition of civil society organizations, encouraged citizens to demand the election be postponed by honking their car horns and playing an alarm signal from their windows.

Tensions over the election also divided the ruling coalition. The leader of Agreement, a minority partner to Law and Justice, was strongly against voting in May and successfully threatened to break the government’s parliamentary majority if the election were not postponed. But the decision to delay the election and preserve the fragile unity of the ruling camp came at a cost. The last pretenses of legality were dropped when the election was not officially postponed but simply did not happen, following an agreement among political leaders.

Before the political and social turmoil over the presidential election, Poland’s ruling camp derived its legitimacy from the ballot box. As the government saw it, the will of a majority of voters justified undermining judicial independence or resisting the protection of certain minority rights. But the determination to hold the presidential election despite widespread social concerns seriously weakened this justification.

If the vote had been held on May 10, the turnout, according to polls, would have been around 20 percent. Most opposition supporters—convinced that the election could not be free, fair, and secret under the circumstances—would have abstained in protest against an infringement of democratic norms. But many supporters of the ruling party also declared they would not vote, most of them out of concern for their health.

With its popular support weakened and a fragile parliamentary majority, Law and Justice finds itself in a difficult situation. After years of undermining institutions of liberal democracy, the party cannot simply go back to respecting the rule of law. Its only way out is forward—even if that means undermining democratic institutions still further. This direction is even more tempting now that the pandemic has created many new opportunities for the discretionary use of power.

Paweł Marczewski is the head of the Citizens research unit at ideaForum, the think tank of the Batory Foundation in Warsaw. He is also a member of Carnegie’s Civic Research Network.

There are many reasons to presume that, all things being equal, rights-respecting, pluralist democracies will steward their populations through the coronavirus pandemic better than other kinds of regimes. Various pressures in well-functioning democracies are likely to steer governments toward making decisions that put the general interests of the public first by protecting their health and material well-being.

These pressures include independent media and a parliamentary opposition, which ensure that citizens are informed about the decisions governments make and the results they deliver. They also include independent courts, which guarantee that measures taken by governments genuinely contribute to the public good, as well as a functioning civil society able to make sure that public-interest issues are incorporated into decisionmaking.

As such, public debates during the pandemic could make salient to citizens the value and importance of the rights and democratic institutions that they can use to ensure their leaders pursue the public good. But whether the public recognizes this opportunity depends heavily on the narratives they hear from politicians and others who speak through the media about the relationship between rights, democracy, and public health.

Unfortunately, this relationship is commonly framed as rights and democracy versus public health. That is, citizens are often told that to guarantee public health, they must accept limitations on their rights. This framing is advanced by politicians in both good and bad faith and frequently repeated by journalists and commentators in the media.

Human rights and democracy supporters often unwittingly help cement this relationship as the only way of thinking about these principles when presenting their counterarguments. There are four common narratives from the pro-rights and pro-democracy sector that are inadvertently harmful. First, it is better to uphold democracy and suffer some health costs than live in good health but with fewer rights. Second, limitations on rights are acceptable, but the line between freedoms and health is being drawn in the wrong place. Third, citizens can accept temporary limitations but must get their democracies back as soon as possible. Fourth, some regimes are acting in bad faith to use the coronavirus as cover to introduce or consolidate authoritarianism.

These are all valid and important points. But it is problematic if the bulk of the public debate about rights, democracy, and health cements the perception that the relationship boils down to a binary choice. Decades of research into the psychological origins of political attitudes show that if people feel that their health is in jeopardy, this will be perceived as a threat that will cause significant segments of the population to endorse authoritarian attitudes. These attitudes include accepting restrictions on civil liberties and democratic participation. If societies are presented with a choice between protecting health and protecting rights and democracy, health tends to win.

The current unhelpful narrative follows hot on the heels of other, similarly damaging conceptualizations of rights and democracy. During the so-called war on terror, rights were represented as incompatible with security. And over the last decade, movements with authoritarian agendas have persistently portrayed rights activists and the causes and groups they fight for as threatening to culture, religion, public safety, and economic prosperity. If the public is continuously bombarded with these kinds of narratives, support for democratic freedoms will be weakened.

It is encouraging to see some positive narratives being developed, in particular on the role that a free and independent press plays in keeping governments on their toes by asking difficult questions, exposing mistakes, and debating the range of policy choices. The same needs to be said for other elements of a properly functioning democracy.

For example, similar narratives should explain the role that civil society plays in channeling the views of relevant people (such as health workers and educators) and other public-interest issues (such as anticorruption) into government decisionmaking and public debate. There should also be greater attention on the roles of a healthy parliamentary opposition and independent judges in ensuring that the executive does not overly restrict freedoms. And the narrative needs to be more strongly based on rights—such as the right to health, which, if properly implemented, would have put health systems in a more robust position before the pandemic arrived.

If the public does not understand the importance and value of democratic freedoms, it becomes easier for political movements with authoritarian ambitions to misrepresent and, ultimately, dismantle those freedoms. By framing freedoms as tools to navigate the pandemic, societies not only improve their well-being now but also contribute to building the public support needed to sustain rights and the institutions that protect them in the long run.

Israel Butler is the head of advocacy at the Civil Liberties Union for Europe.