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Mark Leonard is Director of the European Council on Foreign Relations.Handout

Mark Leonard is Director of the European Council on Foreign Relations.

When COVID-19 struck Europe and forced millions of people into internal exile, many were overcome by a deep sense of loneliness. This reflected not only a craving to be reunited with friends and family, but also a broader feeling that their countries had been helpless and abandoned in the face of a global pandemic. This sense of rejection is profoundly affecting the individual psyches and worldviews of Europe’s citizens.

That is the main finding of a recent European Council on Foreign Relations (ECFR) poll of 11,000 people across nine European countries – Bulgaria, Denmark, France, Germany, Italy, Poland, Portugal, Spain and Sweden – that together represent two-thirds of the European Union’s population. Paradoxically, the ECFR poll shows the absence of help for member states during the first phase of the crisis has led to an overwhelming demand for concerted EU action to help countries recover.

The ECFR’s survey reveals that Europeans have felt completely let down during the pandemic. Some 63 per cent of respondents in Italy, and 61 per cent in France, said the EU did not rise to the challenges posed by COVID-19.

Moreover, the percentage of respondents who felt the United States had been a key ally for their country in this crisis was vanishingly small, with Italy having the largest share at just 6 per cent. In three countries – Denmark, Portugal, and Germany – a majority of citizens said their opinion of the U.S. had worsened during the crisis, a view held by a large minority in Italy, Poland, and Bulgaria.


Worsening perceptions of the U.S. seem to reflect more than just disapproval of President Donald Trump. Many Europeans are likely witnessing America’s chaotic COVID-19 response, and asking how a country struggling to help itself can be relied upon.

At the same time, more than 60 per cent of French and Danish respondents, and almost half of those surveyed in Germany, claim to have cooled on China. Indeed, except in Spain and Bulgaria, a plurality of respondents in each country blame China for the outbreak of the coronavirus crisis in Europe.

But Europeans’ current anxiety is fuelling a new desire for joint action. Some 63 per cent of all respondents think the current crisis has shown the need for more co-operation at the EU level.

Before the pandemic, European politics often seemed to be defined by opposing camps of nationalists and globalists. ECFR polling suggests that COVID-19 has scrambled the distinction between the two. Many nationalists have come to realize that a nation-state cannot rescue itself by standing alone, while globalists increasingly recognize there will never be a perfect international order while Mr. Trump, Russian President Vladimir Putin, and Chinese President Xi Jinping are in power. Since neither nationalist retrenchment nor global co-operation will help to avert the next crisis, a new space for finding European solutions is opening up.

Indeed, 52 per cent of respondents want a more unified EU response to global threats and challenges; 46 per cent support increased controls over the bloc’s external borders; and 41 per cent favour pushing firms to produce more medical supplies within the EU, even if this results in higher prices. And in all nine countries surveyed, the proportion of respondents who support more action on climate change as a result of the pandemic exceeds the share who favour less.

Across Europe, people recognize that if a Sino-American trade and technology war jeopardized globalization, then greater European unity – including in the form of the EU’s proposed recovery plan – offers the best hope of safeguarding their economies and values. Rather than just preaching the merits of a greener economy, Europe can set a price for carbon and use border-adjustment taxes to persuade others to meet its standards or absorb the costs. Likewise, the EU’s digital agenda and plans for a digital-services tax may yet force global tech giants to abide by European rules.

National governments and Brussels-based EU institutions realize that the COVID-19 crisis has created an opening for stronger collective European action. But policymakers must understand that the demands of voters for greater co-operation do not reflect an appetite for institution-building, but rather deeper anxiety about losing control in a perilous world.

Europe is now a community of necessity rather than choice. And voters increasingly see the EU as a tool to strengthen, rather than weaken, national sovereignty.

The Franco-German recovery plan presented in May could mark the start of a crucial new chapter of the European story. But building a more powerful and unified Europe will require the bloc’s leaders to tailor their arguments in a way that connects with – rather than repels – European voters.


Copyright: Project Syndicate, 2020. www.project-syndicate.org


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