The talk is about an exit strategy. Several European governments are mulling ways to ease a lockdown imposed to contain the highly contagious coronavirus.
The Spanish government announced it will allow certain businesses and factories to reopen. In Germany, a group of experts have recommended that schools be soon resumed. Austria is already loosening restrictions.
Other European countries are looking for an exit strategy as governments try and cushion the impact of a virus that has virtually shut down economies, closed borders, and temporarily ended a way of life that was so much taken for granted.
In contrast, Ireland, Britain, and France are taking no risks. In a nationwide television address on April 13, 2020, President Emmanuel Macron announced that France’s lockdown will remain in place until May 11.
It’s too difficult to predict what Europe will look like once this pandemic has run its course. Debates have already begun about the merits of working from home, about how the pandemic has benefited the environment, about how health systems should be improved, and about how this virus has exposed a lack of resilience.
The latter is not just about the lack of preparedness or about anticipating crises. It is about the strength of democratic institutions—not just in Europe but also elsewhere—to withstand crises.
Yet those institutions, in most cases, have proved resilient. So far, public acceptance throughout Europe of the lockdown has been high. No thanks to attempts by China and Russia to sow distrust and divisions among democracies. That is the West’s other virus: the attempts to undermine democratic institutions from outside and from within.
From outside, China and Russia share the same narrative about the pandemic. They blame the West, in particular the United States for starting it. And in a bid to weaken the West and the fraying transatlantic relationship, their disinformation and propaganda campaigns have targeted Europe.
Europe is highly vulnerable to such propaganda. One reason is that most European governments are aghast about what is taking place in the United States under the leadership of President Donald Trump. The West has singularly failed to assume political leadership during this global pandemic.
The other reason for Europe’s vulnerability is that the EU as a bloc has had no coherent strategy toward China and Russia. The member states each have their own policy toward Beijing and Moscow, whether it be about integrating Chinese Huawei’s 5G into their mobile networks or German energy companies teaming up with Russian state-controlled Gazprom to send natural gas to Western Europe.
These controversies may seem remote as European governments fight to save lives and contain the fallout from the coronavirus. But China’s attempts to curry favor with EU countries by sending medical supplies are not altruistic or philanthropic. They are about showing the weaknesses of some European governments and their ability to cope.
Above all, China’s actions are about preparing its own European exit strategy for the day after, for the day when the pandemic is over. Such a strategy is about establishing a permanent foothold in Europe’s communications networks and in other strategic projects.
Indeed, Europe could become easy prey for China to buy stakes in companies hard hit by the pandemic. With this in mind, Margrethe Vestager, the EU’s competition commissioner, said in an interview with the Financial Times that European countries should buy stakes in certain companies so they don’t succumb to Chinese takeovers.
Meanwhile, no doubt Russia will continue its support of populist parties and movements in a bid to divide the EU and weaken its democratic institutions.
Europe is also vulnerable in ways that undermine its democracy from within. Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán has exploited the coronavirus pandemic to accrue even more powers by de facto suspending Hungary’s parliament. Orbán’s exit strategy for Hungary seems to be to ensure he comes out of the crisis more powerful than before.
In Poland, the governing Law and Justice party seems determined to go ahead and hold its presidential election in May 2020 via a postal ballot. Let’s not mention Poland’s lack of experience in holding this type of ballot and the fact that the country is currently in lockdown. That, by the way, has not stopped President Andrzej Duda from campaigning as he seeks reelection.
The other EU leaders have reacted in their usual way to these developments: lots of handwringing instead of sanctions. There are, after all, more pressing matters to deal with.
Yet during a crisis of this magnitude, democracy cannot be put on the backburner. If anything, there’s more than ever a need for democratic institutions and governments to become more inclusive and transparent. This will make them less vulnerable and more prepared for the day after.
And there’s much more of a need for European leaders to stop turning a blind eye and to defend their democracies from the external and internal threats.
That should be Europe’s other exit strategy.
Comments(8)
To solve exceptional situation by making goverments more inclusive, seems to me as a blind alley. Goverments must decide in real time, and it would be resonable to create a permanently sitting twin of the European Council to be an European body coordinating real time decision making member states governments. Free frontiers are most important prerequisite for any exit strategy and withbout a permanent coordination it is impossible to reach it.
Judy I have nothing to say about Russia and China's actions. I am not eligible. However, regarding a much needed common voice from the EU, you need to review and get lessons from how USA was born. You cannot create a single Unite States of Europe when there are 27 political leaders leading their countries and hungry for their supporters' votes. Best regards
Dear Miss Dempsey, you have said it clearly "There are urgent things to deal with." The pandemic is the main one, and today, there is no guarantee that the next decisions will have a relevant scientific weight to think that "normality" is near and that we can set economic activity in motion and daily life in motion. The world's most intelligent and trained virologists seriously warn us that a "second wave" of massive infections can catch us off guard and we will experience a public health catastrophe. On the other hand, I understand that an "attempt at normalization" is reasonable, since it would help us to know if luck accompanies us with the so-called "herd immunization", supporting and accepting a high price of deaths ... What am I trying to tell you, dear Judy Dempsey ? 1º Well, first of all, let us forget about the most "wayward, mischievous, authoritarian and hooligans" European partners in the domestic sphere; with a serious public warning, with a serious tone and in writing from the European Council that we will soon deal with Orbán and Andrzej Duda ... This will make them reflect seriously because they will understand that we are solving a serious problem and that later they will have to face "the worst problems of his life ”… 2 nd Second, issue an order and ultimatum from the European Council so that the members of the E.U. suspend all political and economic deals with China and Russia until further notice ... 3º Strengthen all military bases with US troops. throughout the European territory with the billions of euros that are needed; deploying the Pentagon's strategic nuclear arsenal to give "security and time" to the economic recovery of the European Union. 4th Order Josep Borrell not to give a single penny to the Islamist murderers of Tehran; and not a single euro to the drug traffickers of Venezuela. The foreign “high representative” should be more ashamed and finance allied troops to fight in Europe. Have they gone crazy in Brussels? Financing the butchers of Tehran? Holding the Venezuelan drug cartel? And without having done anything for the European Europeans !! That is the image of merchants, idiots, uneducated and ignorant !! 5º They are “details” of capital geopolitical importance… European foreign policy is disgusting and embarrassing. If the European Council achieves that ... there will be no Polish, Hungarian or Serbian who will raise their voices in Europe, because they will understand that the matter is serious and that we are preparing NATO to survive the permanent war that they have declared to us ... 6º Let's be serious… we have to kick many incompetent people out of high office, I am delighted to read your texts, always at the foot of the canyon, Miss Dempsey.
All nations need to contemplate any exit strategy from a lock down situation relative to the second wave of Covid 19 that could hit in the fall in the northern hemisphere. The US CDC’s Dr. Robert Redfield is now predicting a second wave explicitly, Dr. Anthony Fauci the long time director of the US National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) says he “would anticipate” a second wave of the coronavirus to hit the United States in the fall but that the country he thinks will be ready for it with therapeutic interventions and testing. I have many doubts about Fauci’s belief in the Trump administrations ability to deal with a s second wave given its desperation to get the economy working. While the past as it relates to pandemics does not always predict the future it has to be noted that the second wave of the 1918 influenza pandemic was the most deadly on a global scale. We all could be opening up societies to shut them down again given that there will be no effective vaccine to be administered in mass for Covid 19 by the fall. We are not at the end game in all of this.
First, it isn’t Homo Sapiens, a recently arrived species, deciding the exit of this molecular machine as old as life itself. It is also as new as SARS-CoV, same family, fatality rate 10%, between 07/2003 – 05/2004, so we were forewarned. The dinosaurs didn’t develop devices to deflect meteorites (and we follow in their footsteps), we didn’t develop vaccine technology for this new threat, that we knew was coming back. It isn’t clear why there is talk about a second wave, the creature could very well be with us for a long time; flu’s come and go tactics, including mutations, might not be duplicated (let’s hope for the best). There is some resemblance with the flu of 1918, a connection to China. Starting 1916, tens of thousands of laborers arrived from China to work on Europe’s killing fields, driven by poverty and political uncertainties. British wages, for example: an embarkment fee of 20 yuan, followed by 10 yuan/month, paid over to family in China. 2020, different picture: after decades of turmoil, hundreds of thousands of wealthy people from China arrived as tourists, businessmen, students, spending money left and right. In 1989 the Western elites had a choice: make a lot of money by moving almost everything to China, or make just money by integrating the Eastern/Central Europe in the EU/West. They chose Milton Friedman’s (the astute entertainer) liberal script and soon China will be in the WTO, and prove that cats can catch mice, regardless of color. At the same time Eastern/Central Europe peoples couldn’t deliver the next Samsung or match Taiwan, cashing in on their solid educational systems and leapfrogging like India did in IT. Until 1989, the West displayed for a thousand years antifragility, a systemic ability to bounce back to better (take that Spengler), but in the end greed won, and sapped everything to the point that PPE comes from China and not proven hydroxychloroquine from India. The EU, wealthiest, largest entity in Western history is now at the point where people must be protected against propaganda and Trump, while preparing a new strategy to protect itself against China and Russia. Strategy for China will take decades, and it isn’t clear how all economic ties will be cut, while still having functional economies; after all Germany is an export-oriented economy. In what concerns Russia, Trump has continued Obama’s general policy, amplifying it at great expense for the US taxpayer. With antifragility on display, would we fare better in a nuclear war?
Do you suggest unconditional surrender? Hands up, don't shoot please! You can inject me, if you want, the COVID-25! Europe is yours, Mister Xi Jinping! Down with the West! Long live China! ... heh, heh, heh ... Well, it's a joke of mine, Mr. Alexis .. Greetings ...
Well, it is tremendously daring to propose an economic recovery through autarky, almost ridiculous, but my intention was to express a doubt: Is it not a good deterrence method to deploy nuclear weapons to warn that we will seriously respond to any military attack? Have you thought that the time is right to destroy two US Navy aircraft carriers in Guam and Japan? It's so easy for China ... You won't have a better chance, ever. The impact would leave Europe in a state of skock ... It would be Vladimir Putin's great moment to achieve geopolitical glory ... These things, Alexis, nobody usually believes ... Until they happen. a greeting
Judy Dempsey is always almost as surprising as the USA president or the US Congress in assigning the blames to Russia or China. There is actually much more disinformation spread in Europe (or theUS) by insiders or 'experts' with diverging views than by Chinese or russian rumors , if even there are any. No one I know believes 'the US started it', and it is 'highly likely' any poll would show so. However, which EU country ever sanctioned any dictatorship (Sygman Rhee, Battista, Pinochet, Videla, Viola,etc...). Why would they sanction much tamer Duda or Orban just because they belong? Preparing for a common strategy after the epidemic is at least as hard as a common fiscal policy against tax evasion.
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