The Gulf Time Newspaper One of the finest business newspapers in the UAE brought to you by our professional writers and editors.
Apocalyptic visions of hastily-raised national barriers to trade, long lines of trucks gathering at the border, and shortages of essential supplies have haunted Europe ever since the UK voted to leave the bloc since 2016. If such a scenario is getting closer to reality, it has little to do with Brexit and everything to do with the coronavirus pandemic.
Erratic border restrictions across the 27-member bloc, put up by around a dozen countries including Spain, Germany and Poland in the name of combating the spread of Covid-19, are starting to bite. Poland’s closure of its borders to non-citizens and travel suspensions have created lines of vehicles stretching at least 10 kilometres (6 miles) on the Lithuanian border, according to Bloomberg News, with bottlenecks also seen in Hungary and Switzerland. While goods are supposed to be unaffected, they’re getting caught up in the delays, with the International Road Transport Union saying European crossings are in chaos.
Food and medicine flows are increasingly at risk: EU adviser Maria Capobianchi warned that internal borders were making
it “more difficult†for virus-stricken Italy to receive medical equipment. A fear of shortages has pushed several countries to ban medical-equipment exports to ensure their own citizens get priority.
The danger of unpicking the very fabric of the EU — free movement, frictionless trade, unity and solidarity — is being justified in the name of public health. The Covid-19 case tally has risen recently in Europe, now dubbed the “epicenter†of the outbreak; the amount of combined cases in Italy, France, Germany, Spain, Switzerland, the UK and the Netherlands now exceeds China’s total of 80,928. Slowing the spread of disease and flattening the infection curve is put forward as the end that justifies the means of beggar-thy-neighbour policies. Spain has declared a state of emergency; France says it’s in a state of war. Few EU leaders talk about Europe when addressing the crisis — the mood is very much every country for itself.
Such knee-jerk reactions are pretty counter-productive. If this were genuinely a war between states, or some kind of emergency restricted to a single country, it might make sense to kick solidarity or cooperation to the curb. But this is a virus that doesn’t respect borders or nationalities. Every country within continental Europe has at least one confirmed case of Covid-19. When Austria earlier this month closed its border to people from Italy without a medical certificate, it had fewer than 200 cases; now, it has over 2,000. No state is immune.
Collective action makes much more sense in a crisis like this than national restrictions. There are economies of scale when it comes to healthcare, whether it’s the pooling of financial resources to fund vaccine research or the procurement of medical equipment. Information-sharing would allow for supply-chain bottlenecks to be properly monitored and addressed.
—Bloomberg
Lionel Laurent is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist covering Brussels. He previously worked at Reuters and Forbes