German EU Council Presidency: Quo Vadis EU?

In the first few weeks of the coronavirus pandemic, terms such as Europe or EU were rarely heard when the political leaders of EU member states appeared in front of the cameras. Protectionism was at the forefront. In view of the tsunami that affected all parts of society, this reflexive attitude was perhaps explainable.

With the benefit of hindsight, this can nevertheless be questioned. Because just as the virus knows no national borders, its effects in one country also affect all other countries. In my opinion, the lesson from the economic and social disaster we are now facing is therefore clear: EU-wide strategies must be developed in order to prepare for such and similar challenges in the future. Individual national interests must take a back seat for the time being. This should therefore be the maxim during the six months of the German EU Council Presidency, which began on July 1, 2020.

“How well an individual country in Europe is doing depends on how well the EU as a whole is doing,” emphasized EU Council President Charles Michel at the EU summit on 24 April 2020. From a German perspective, for example, this means that six of Germany’s ten largest trading partners come from the EU.

To go a little further: protectionism can support a country in a crisis situation in the short term. However, even in the medium term, national lone wolves threaten to become the pawns of global challenges. This applies just as much to a pandemic as it does to the trade conflicts of recent years. A lot of trust in European cooperation has also been destroyed by unilateral actions such as the export ban on medical protective equipment by Germany and France, the confiscation of medical supplies from China that were destined for Italy by the Czech Republic and Poland or the EU’s vehement refusal to provide financial support to countries such as Italy in early March.

In order to better solve challenges in the future, we must see the coronavirus crisis as an opportunity to tackle the long overdue realignment of the EU. DIW President Marcel Fratzscher has outlined the milestones for this: “It must be possible to establish the euro even more strongly as an international currency. However, this also requires us to complete the single market for services in Europe, to have a banking and capital market union, to have more common financial policy and better coordination. This applies to climate protection, it applies to security against terrorism, it applies to migration.”

The current challenge is to keep mass unemployment and recession in check. This will be more difficult in countries that were already struggling economically before the pandemic than in economically stable regions. There is therefore no way around support measures. These must not be poured out with a watering can, but should serve to even out differences between individual EU countries. This is the only way to avoid injustices in competition after the coronavirus crisis and save the cohesion of the European single market.