© REUTERS/Aly Song

Capitalism has come to end. They’re saying it on TV, on Facebook, all over social media. It’s all going down the tubes, the whole thing’s a write-off. It’s all over now, obviously. So they say.

The same judgments, all over again. The same three-ring circus. But these misdiagnoses also form part of our Western cultural canon. These endlessly recurring critiques of capitalism are vague, so vague that they say more about the critics than the subject  that has them so concerned.

Are humanities and social science elites insulted that filthy lucre rules the world, rather than their own utopias and visions? Do the critics really know what they are criticizing? Can they say what kind of economy should take the place of capitalism? Can they put something forward capable of achieving anything like the prosperity enjoyed now in the West, in China, or in India?

Do they really have alternatives capable of providing the “greatest happiness to the greatest number,” as  John Stuart Mill put it? Or is their passionate negation meant to cover up their failure to develop sustainable alternatives?

These are not rhetorical questions, especially not now, in an epoch of pandemic and recession, which forms the background to the transformation from an industrial society to a knowledge society. Anyone who puts the question: “Is old-style capitalism still fit for purpose?” (meaning, of course, the market economies of the industrial nations) must be able to supply something better than what they so glibly criticize. But the same is true for die-hard defenders of the status quo. Pro-capitalist and anti-capitalist positions have become institutionalized and self-referential. What we need is something else: accessible capitalism. This type of capitalism must find its own way forward, businesslike but putting trust in people.

This is what I want to write about here, a third way, a market economy, capitalism for a self-conscious and self-confident civil society. Civil capitalism, which can pave the way for an open knowledge-based society.

But before getting into that, we should analyze relations as they currently are, figure out what we have at our disposal. Another capitalism is possible, but only if we are clear what we are talking about.

Self Determination

We owe John Maynard Keynes the insight: “the difficulty lies not in the new ideas, but in escaping from the old ones.” Old thinking now is industrial culture and the economy of hard work. The word industry, coined from the Latin industria, underlies that economy, which brought us everything we came to regard as normal, including mass production and the society belonging to it. Over the course of two hundred years, things have gotten so mixed together that it is hard to see the wood for the trees. But as Peter Drucker, visionary thinker of the knowledge economy, would put it, this state of affairs is actually a precondition for productive knowledge; it shapes the capacity of knowledge to “recognize connections.”

In other words, it is about understanding complexity, rather than reducing it to nothing. Digitization is nothing less than the continuation of automation processes which, to all intents and purposes, have gotten rid of routine work. Just as machines are replacing human power, network and algorithms are turning on their own inventors. If you only see a dystopian future, you don’t have enough imagination: what remains specific to human beings, something of which they have an infinite supply: individual work deriving from their personality and their own talents. No longer will we do the work ordered by others, “personally dependent” and “in service to another,” as German law on employees (in German, the word translates as “work-taker,” a telling phrase) would have it. Instead, they sing “intellectually and emotionally, we will work on our own account.”

None of this is entirely new. If we think of industrialization as a family, the most successful siblings have been automation and the division of labor. The latter always means specialization. The more you know, the more independently you can work. This is why knowledge is power, more than ever now, when it is combined with personality, individual know-how, and expertise. This development will advance all the more quickly if others can also have access to the benefits of specialization, as far as possible without barriers.

When ability creates a context, a market arises. The market economy is simply successful communication between those who have an ability and those who need that ability to fulfill their own needs. The knowledge economy cannot exist without participation and cooperation; for its part, this kind of participation requires self-confident, self-conscious agents at every level. This is something rather different to the “iron cage” described by Max Weber, with its older forms of dependency.

Reason versus Passion

Capitalism is not what has created bottlenecks within industrial societies. On the contrary, capitalisms are tools for openness and flexibility—so flexible that even using “capitalism” can sometimes be misleading. For this reason, social scientists tend to suggest that capitalism is an “essentially contested concept,” i.e. one that is constantly under challenge. The concept and its meaning are fought over in terms of people’s deepest worldview. But the “market economy,” a more concrete term for what we are talking about, is an event, a process in motion.

If something like this runs up against passionate republicanism, things can get problematic. Anti-capitalism is pure republicanism in the French Revolutionary spirit, in other words Enlightenment turned back on itself. The Revolution wants to create equality and pluralism, in others words, it wants to tap into complexity. But this quickly gets out of control, with the emergence of a politics of feeling, which tip over into simple patterns and explanations.

The current transformation makes this more visible than ever. What is at stake here are solutions for a mass society, simple collective answers. It is not capitalism in the dock, but rather the political simplifications, the reducers of complexity, the equalizers, the levelers-down. Our culture is on their side, let’s not kid ourselves.

For most people, pluralism and its systems are regarded as a threat. But the knowledge economy, like its civil society, functions according to other patterns. It is about grasping complexity, not reducing it any further. Less-is-more, the battle cry of the present day, is pure nonsense.

Even in a place where the boss—this is a good thing—puts more store on quality and the satisfying of personal requirements, instead of pure quantitative growth, as in industrial and consumer society, that is not something “less” in the sense of a new “overall view,” instead, these movements are on to something more, as prosperity leads one to want more than just more of the same.

In 1941, Abraham Maslow developed his pyramid of human needs. It is composed of five principal levels: existential needs, security needs, social needs, individual needs, and, finally, self-fulfillment. Our ancestors had their work cut out to meet the first three levels of needs. But human beings are more sated now, and better off. They want to be seen, they demand the fulfillment of their own personal needs.

We see this every day: everywhere, respect and recognition as a person, as a gendered person, as a colleague, is becoming ever more important. At the top of the pyramid stands Maslow’s self-actualization, which means optimally unfolding one’s own talents, including for the well-being of others.

Abundant mass production and automated routines are no longer enough to assuage needs at this level. As with industrial capitalism, they are at best a foundation. Quantity gives way to quality. The market economy is a pluralistic system, which can only be created with cooperation, differentiation, and joy in innovation. It is the operating system of an open society. Totalitarians, dictators, distant elites—they get on just fine without capitalism. But everyone else who wants their share of prosperity, the chance to make a go of things. It is not about the abolition of the system, it is about reinterpreting it. And making use of it.

Ruses

In his brilliant The Dynamic of Capitalism, French historian Fernand Braudel gave us perhaps the best definition of “the system,” which he called the “sum of ruses, processes, habits, and efficiencies.” This is not a doctrine of stasis at all. It is not the theory that anti-capitalists and method-obsessed economists are so eagerly seeking. Anyone who has tried to precisely describe the essence of capitalism has proven little more than that it cannot be done.

Max Weber sought the essence of capitalism in religion, in other words, in culture. This was also Braudel’s path. But this trail is only approximate, it only works in combination with one’s own experiences in dealing with behavior in the market economy. The tool assimilates to cultures, it coalesces with them. There is no one capitalism, there are hundreds of them. One study, which economic historian Werner Abelshauser is fond of quoting, identifies more than 750 varieties, all substantially different. Culture and social customs determine the economic toolbox. All capitalisms are the image of the cultures in which they operate. Globalism, in which cultural differences allegedly no longer exist, only seems strong if you don’t look too closely. Everywhere, cultures are the real rulers, the interpreters of market-economic methods and their ruses lead to highly variable results. Unification attempts regularly fail.

Japan’s form of capitalism, for example, is strongly focused on the state, incorporating the traditionally strong relation between citizens and the government. American variants are happier with risk, they take their lead from the individualist pioneer. China’s capitalism established the state as its own enabler, which attempts to achieve prosperity goals with the help of a highly dynamic (and often brutal) industrial capitalism. “Rheinisch Capitalism,” a variant closely associated with the history of the Federal Republic of Germany, is the social market economy which demands participation: “Welfare for all,” as Ludwig Erhard defined it.

This core is lost because of struggles over capitalism, which are basically culture wars, religious wars in a way. Neoliberalism is turned into a perfidious conjuring trick of the economy; in fact, the term refers to the “social liberalism” described by the German economists Walter Eucken and Wilhelm Röpke. The aim of social liberalism was to put the tools of the market in the hands of as many people as possible, in order to achieve more self-actualization, more self-determination, and more freedom. Systematic criticism of and opposition to market economies are fed by the primacy of the state and its institutions, over and above the free market. This leads to the opposite of what many critics intend: an expansion of the rights of the free individual.

Even today, many people live in a world of the oikos, the household economy, whereby a strict but fair father hands out whatever is available. Since ancient times, this has been the favored concept for thinking about economics. The claim it makes is as follows: there can be no more than this. The cake can only be divided up once, and we should do so as fairly as possible. “Fixed pie” is what economic psychologists call it: the belief of all those who never learned to bake.

Moreover, this belief is ahistorical. Human cultural development has always built on our capacity to use thought, renewal, transformation, and development to make more out of less. As a species Homo Faber has been successful, but it not very self-confident. Uncertain people cling to power, which promises security. There oikos is recommended, because power must be distributed. Shouldn’t enlightened people take it over themselves, instead of subjecting themselves to structures which are so hostile to innovation and emancipation?

In 1848, the Communist Manifesto by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels conjured up the spirit of the bourgeoisie and its economic tools, through which man is “at last compelled to face with sober senses his real conditions of life.” Marxism, says the Manifesto itself, is “sweeping away all long-standing fixed things.” In other words, it helped to get rid of the Ancien Régime. That spirit consists of reason, sobriety, pragmatism—the whole Enlightenment schtick, in other words. Thinking for oneself, Kant’s goal for the Enlightenment, is not an end in itself. It should constantly critique, challenge, and test reality anew.

A civil society worthy of the name knows how to help itself: it designs. Almost all conspiracy theories, on the extremist wings of both left and right, are based on economic illiteracy. Marx and Engels were not the first and will not be the last who knew that there is no freedom without economic self-determination. Successful emancipation always means one thing: to free oneself of outside control and dependencies. Self-determination cannot be delegated to authority or ideology. Whoever wants freedom must understand economics, and know how to apply it. That is the spirit of civil society, of civil capitalism.

The Industrial Comedy

In this way, the theater of Western anti-capitalism, so often filled with boos, in fact presents a comedy of mistaken identity. If people knew what the market economy, in other words: capitalism, actually is—a system leading to the acceptance of the individual and of pluralism—maybe they would applaud, who knows? But they perceive something else, and in fact this other thing, which has disguised itself as the market economy, is not something we can use as an operating system. It is industrialism, also called industrial capitalism: the figure who stands between us and a successful transformation of the economy.

Industrialism does not need people to think for themselves. It needs a norm-bound, regulated society, collectives with interchangeable individuals. It needs command and control structures, and it needs a strict state to regulate, to create the famous/infamous conditions for “investment security,” the thing endlessly demanded by business associations and lobby groups. In this variant of industrialization, the primacy of politics is never questioned. If sales don’t take off, they demand subsidies and purchase bonuses. Education purely services production and its subordinate areas. It is not a question of learning to learn, in other words, of thinking in new and innovative ways. The focus, in fact, is on educational collectivism, or, fulfilling the plan.

Industrialism has no interest in emancipating human beings, although this is a delicate paradox as it does make a contribution to it. In other words, it first creates the material basis necessary for its own super-secession. This, as Maslow would regard it, takes us from the first three secure levels of his hierarchy up to the upper two levels, where human beings can be what they are meant to be: self-determining.

Nothing less than this is at stake. We are lacking advocates of civil society—who should always also be civil capitalists—to take economic fate into their own hands. In this way, hundreds of millions of people have escaped poverty in recent decades. It was not passion and not ideology which made such a fundamental change to circumstances in China and India. It was the sober gaze of the market, here so misunderstood and unrecognized.

“The unified world has become a real thing,” wrote Joschka Fischer in his foreword to Jagdish Bhagwati’s In Defense of Globalization. A clever, hopeful book, which soberly collates evidence for the successes of the “system,” despised by so many in Germany, because they do not understand how much their own lives are dependent on this system for the continued existence and functioning of what they criticize. The alternatives to constitutive capitalism are always close at hand. They include violence, poverty, hunger, and dictatorship. Let us look soberly at these facts and at our social relations. We do not need to force ourselves to do so. Reason is enough. Let’s make sure this resource does not run out. Let us increase and multiply it.

The post A Future History of Capitalism appeared first on Berlin Policy Journal - Blog.

© REUTERS/Willy Kurniawan

It began with a patient in Jakarta. In April 2035 the man was admitted to hospital in the Indonesian capital with flu symptoms. Within a few weeks, the novel pathogen, which the World Health Organization named Flu-35, spread first to other parts of Asia and then to Europe, Africa, and North and South America.

Led by the WHO, the international community responded quickly with countermeasures. The disease brought back memories of the COVID-19 pandemic of 2020/21. After successively controlling that virus with a vaccine from fall 2021, extensive reforms were introduced and massive investments were made in prevention, early detection, and crisis response. At the heart of the reforms was the transformation of the WHO into a more powerful and independent global public health organization.

The international community has now been able to benefit from the lessons of the COVID-19 pandemic and was thus able to rapidly contain Flu-35—without the outbreak developing into a global crisis. The fact that the end of the crisis was declared after only 10 months shows what great progress has been made since 2020 in combating pandemics.

Containment Thanks to Early Detection

So, how exactly was it contained? After a series of clusters of the novel flu epidemic occurred in Jakarta in April 2035, the local health authorities quickly reported the incidents to the WHO. Within days, it sent a team of virologists, doctors, and epidemiologists to Indonesia to work with the local authorities to gather and evaluate initial evidence of the novel influenza virus and recommend action for all WHO member states.

In the past, there had often been attempts by local authorities or national governments to cover up disease outbreaks, partly because the affected countries feared the economic damage that travel and trade restrictions would impose. However, the earlier outbreaks are detected and reported, the greater the chance of avoiding serious health crises. This is why the international community has been working hard to improve early warning systems.

On the one hand, after the COVID-19 pandemic, incentives for the rapid notification of outbreaks and improved cooperation with the WHO were created. For example, a massive fund is now available from which affected countries can quickly and easily obtain funding to combat the disease if they report outbreaks. The WHO has also increased the number of emergency teams available to help countries cope with the disease.

In addition to these incentives for the early notification of outbreaks, the international community created mechanisms to reveal cover-up attempts and demand accountability from governments. Fears of massive reputational damage drove up the cost of cover-up attempts.

In addition, existing early warning systems were significantly improved. Firstly, by stepping up the monitoring of pathogens in animals in “disease hotspots”: virologists and experts can thus learn more about which pathogens are spreading in the animal kingdom and could possibly jump to humans and trigger the next epidemic.

Secondly, after the COVID-19 crisis, considerable resources had been invested in the assessment of the epidemiological situation and risk. The WHO expanded the Epidemic Intelligence from Open Sources (EIOS) initiative and optimized the methods of collecting information on outbreaks and the risk assessment of disease incidents. Here, data from informal sources—such as social networks and media—are also evaluated and assessed. This also increases the willingness to report outbreaks quickly, as countries fear that outbreaks will be discovered and made public by other means.

An Independent and Effective WHO

An effective and strong WHO has been at the heart of the successful response to Flu-35. Its recommendations are quickly implemented by its members and not—as in previous cases—ridiculed and disregarded.

The coronavirus crisis had shown that the world needs a stronger WHO to better face pandemics. Although many experts believed that the organization had done a good job in 2020/21, its capacity as a secretariat of 194 member states, without any authority to issue directives and with an insufficient budget, was severely limited.

As was the case after the SARS epidemic in 2002/03, a reform of the International Health Regulations—the central, legally binding instrument of the WHO in outbreak control—was therefore initiated in 2022. This was completed in 2025 and significantly strengthened the WHO’s mandate. The WHO was now able to publicly demand accountability from member states for non-compliance with its recommendations and refusal to cooperate, rather than, as in the past, only standing idly by when countries ignored the organization. It could also impose sanctions, such as fines or temporary loss of voting rights in the UN institutions.

The WHO was also able to act effectively because its dramatic underfunding came to an end after the COVID-19 pandemic. It was indeed a severe blow when the largest donor, the United States, left the organization in 2020. However, a broad coalition of mid-sized powers and private donors led by the EU was able to make up for the resulting financing gap. In addition, the member states agreed to significantly increase the compulsory contributions. This made it possible to build up and expand operational forces and improve early warning and prevention. As a result, the WHO was in a position to act much more independently of the individual interests of its members or private actors.

Pandemic Playbook

When the WHO Director-General warned about the new influenza virus in spring 2035, governments around the world were able to make use of their national Pandemic Playbooks. Under the guidance of WHO, the Pandemic Playbook initiative was launched in 2022, with all member states evaluating and revising their national pandemic plans, some of which had become very outdated. A regular adaptation of these plans was scheduled for every three years, and pandemic management exercises were also held regularly at both a national and international level.

Pandemic Playbooks cover the health sector, civil protection and large parts of the private sector—especially the companies involved in maintaining supplies. In addition to setting up structures and measures to prevent diseases, the plans contain extensive instructions for concrete pandemic management, which are tailored to the respective conditions in the individual countries.

During the Flu-35 pandemic, countries around the world quickly began to ramp up their testing capacities, monitor airport arrivals and departures more closely, and track passengers, as envisaged in the pandemic plans. As past health crises had taught us that travel and trade restrictions were not very effective in containing the pandemic, there was an increased focus on tracing infected people and their contacts and on quarantine measures. The time advantage allowed the health sectors to increase their capacity to cope with a possible influx of infected persons.

The stockpiling of large quantities of PPE and antiviral drugs, which was regularly checked by the WHO, effectively protected hospital and medical practice staff from Flu-35 and ensured better treatment for the sick. The Playbooks also provided guidance to decision-makers in prescribing quarantine and protective measures such as closing kindergartens and schools and shutting down economic activity.

The Pandemic Playbook initiative was supported by substantial funding from the WHO, private foundations, donors, and individual member states. After COVID-19 there was a recognition that investment in prevention and pandemic management is more cost-effective than repairing the enormous damage caused by a pandemic, which led to increased investment. In particular, poorer, unstable, or war- and conflict-ridden regions, which are not in a position to prepare for disease outbreaks, are thus supported in building structures and capacities.

This is one of the reasons why Flu-35 could not develop into a serious global crisis—even regions of the world that had been virtually defenseless during previous outbreaks were able to take action.

“The international response to Flu-35 has shown that pandemics can be successfully controlled,” said the WHO Director-General in her statement at the end of the crisis in February 2036. Since 2020, enormous progress has been made in outbreak control, including the expansion of early detection, the strengthening of WHO and the improvement of national pandemic plans. Flu-35 has not plunged the world into a severe crisis with long-term and severe socio-economic consequences. The long-term goal must be to detect and control pathogens early enough to prevent major outbreaks from occurring in the first place.

But in a hyper-networked world with a growing world population, an increase in megacities and advancing environmental destruction, epidemics remain a realistic scenario that must be prepared for. Even in 2036 and beyond.

The post How We Learned to Halt Pandemics appeared first on Berlin Policy Journal - Blog.

© REUTERS/Hannah McKay

Brexit was always an emotional rather than instrumental venture. It was based on a yearning for national sovereignty and a nostalgic view of the United Kingdom’s role in the world. Its biggest weakness, however, lies elsewhere.

Its architects could not make up their mind about which of two visions they were projecting. Was Britain going to become Singapore-on-the-Thames, a low-tax, low-regulation island of futuristic start-ups that was open to all-comers, as long as they had the skills and the thirst? Or, unshackled from the European Union, was it going to do more to protect its own, to give the state more of a say in determining and equalizing outcomes? The likes of Boris Johnson and Michael Gove—the leaders of the 2016 Leave campaign and presently prime minister and minister for the cabinet office respectively—never resolved this dilemma, because they knew they couldn’t, and because they wanted to have their cake and eat it.

June Is the Real Deadline

Now, with COVID-19 tearing apart lives and communities, exposing the lack of planning, strategy, and investment in the National Health Service and decimating the economy, logic might dictate that the government let up in its determination to meet the December 31 deadline for the transition period out of the EU. Not a bit of it, say ministers, displaying the same hubris that led them initially to dismiss the coronavirus as a serious threat to the UK.

According to one adviser, those around the prime minister believe they can still make the deadline—even though that deadline is not actually the end of the year, but the end of June. As the Withdrawal Treaty states, any request for a one- or two-year extension must be submitted by then.

With the two men at the heart of the negotiations, the EU’s Michel Barnier and the UK’s David Frost, having previously been struck down by the virus, and with discussions only now resuming by video link after a sizeable pause, the chances of any meaningful agreement in weeks are negligible at best.

The aim is a free-trade agreement, with a zero-quota, zero-tariff deal similar to the one the EU agreed with Canada (after years of talks). They also have to tackle aviation, nuclear energy, international security, and the small but politically vexed question of fisheries. Thus, the timetable was always going to be ambitious. When the first round of negotiations began, the two sides admitted that they faced “very serious divergences.”

Johnson’s Corona Setback

Bizarrely, given how much of a mess his government has made of its response to the pandemic, Johnson is politically unassailable. His 80-seat majority in the House of Commons gives him legislative carte blanche. His opinion poll ratings are sky high, boosted by a sympathy vote after he was admitted to hospital with the coronavirus. The Labour Party’s new leader, Keir Starmer, will provide a much more forensic opposition than Jeremy Corbyn ever did, but he will take some time to make a mark in this “wartime” setting.

Longer term, Johnson knows that COVID-19 has delivered a setback to his plans to remake Britain in his image. He knows that he cannot opt for a low-tax regime, such will be the UK’s indebtedness. He also knows that he will not be able to lavish money on his pet projects. Thus, there will be no Singapore-on-the-Thames nor will there be a great social transformation.

Yet, as one former aide to Theresa May points out, Johnson has nowhere else to go. “He has to make this new political geography work. He has to make this realignment permanent. They will be desperate for the budget not to be swept away.” The advisor was referring to the so-called Red Wall, the constituencies in the North of England and the Midlands that had been traditionally Labour, but were won over to the Conservatives in last December’s general election because of their twin pledge to “get Brexit done” and to invest more in their regions.

On his victory, Johnson thanked those voters for “lending” their support, knowing that they could easily transfer it back if they felt the promises had been broken. Hence his visceral reluctance to “do a May” on Brexit, to follow his predecessor in delaying the departure process, irrespective of the circumstances. In addition, if he is unable to make as much of a difference in domestic policy as he had hoped, then Brexit becomes even more talismanic for him.

Oven-Ready or Not

When Johnson declared during the election campaign that a deal “was oven-ready,” it seems he meant it. Or rather he meant that he believed the country was ready for either leaving without a deal or with the most minimalist of deals, both of which translated into the hardest of Brexit and future trading on World Trade Organization terms—plus a special protocol for Northern Ireland. He didn’t even see the point of an accord on security matters or on aviation.

The plan was, literally, to get it all done as soon as possible, both the January 31, 2020, departure and the December 31, 2020, end of transition. The idea was to absorb the economic shock early in the cycle of the parliament.

The British economy might have been just about robust enough in normal times, but now? The counterargument is that, given that a post-COVID-19 recession (or depression) will last years and not months, a short-term delay will not make much difference. That is a cavalier approach—but Johnson is a cavalier politician.

Downing Street has other rhetorical weaponry to deploy. First of all, it can argue that the UK will be saving money by not paying any more into Brussels’ coffers. That is correct, in a narrow sense. It can also point to the fact that the EU has hardly covered itself in glory during the pandemic, closing borders, slapping bans on the export of vital equipment even within Europe, fighting over coronabonds, and the richer North refusing to help out the poorer South, as happened during the eurozone debt crisis a decade ago.

At the same time, the UK cannot point to a single area where being outside of the EU’s institutional framework has helped it plan logistics and purchase equipment to tackle the virus.

U-Turn in the Offing?

Johnson, like Margaret Thatcher, manages the twin feat of sounding unyielding while being perfectly willing to compromise or make a U-turn. The easiest way for him to agree to a delay is if both sides agree to it jointly. This would require Barnier’s agreement as the current requirement is a request coming from London. Any joint agreement could be dressed up as technical and purely in light of the COVID-19 crisis.

Already ultra-Brexiteers are crying foul. They started to sense something was afoot when a former Tory MP, Nick de Bois, who had served as chief of staff to Dominic Raab, now the Foreign Secretary, penned an opinion piece in the Sunday Times newspaper in early April explicitly calling for a delay. “First, it would be incomprehensible to many members of the public if this government devoted time and energy on these talks until the pandemic was under control. The controversy over testing policy and logistics illustrates how intense government efforts must both be and seen to be,” he wrote. “Second, it will strike business, already on life support, as utterly illogical and inconsistent with the government’s efforts to support business, to impose the prospect of greater disruption by not extending the transition period.”

Nigel Farage, who since the December 2019 election has fallen off the political radar, sensed an opportunity when the question of a delay was first mooted. “We need to be free completely of the EU so that, as we emerge from the crisis, we are free to make all of our commercial and trade decisions,” he told his dwindling band of supporters. Tory MPs and former ministers are making similar noises.

The more “Remainers” or “soft Brexiteers” advocate a delay, the harder it will be for Johnson politically. In any case, the final decision will be guided by public opinion. Polls currently show a small majority supporting a delay, although that number drops sharply among ardent “Leavers”. Most floating voters were relieved to have forgotten about Brexit and have little desire or cause to think about it during the pandemic.

Stretching the Truth

Downing Street has already been stung by well-sourced media accounts of how Johnson paid little attention to the coronavirus outbreak during the crucial five weeks from the end of January (while the Germans and others were frantically trying to prepare themselves). He was too busy celebrating “Brexit day” and planning his assault on institutions from the BBC to the civil service. He knows the public will not tolerate another “distraction”.

In the end, if there is no trade deal, and if the UK leaves at the end of the year in the midst of post-corona economic carnage, Johnson will have made his decision on a precise calculation. One of his considerations will be this: voters, no matter how much they suffer, would not be able to disaggregate his move. He could say that Brexit had nothing to do with it. He could lay the blame entirely on the pandemic. It wouldn’t be the first time in his career he had—to put it ever so politely—stretched the truth.

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© REUTERS/Kevin Coombs

The Conference on the Future of Europe was supposed to kick off on Europe Day on May 9, 2020. It was French President Emmanuel Macron who first floated the idea to organize a conference to sketch out EU reform. Ursula von der Leyen picked up on this endeavor, in a move to appease a European Parliament critical of her nomination as Commission President. In her opening statement to the MEPs, she called for a “new push for democracy” and confirmed that the European institutions would organize the conference.

Recently, however, Dubravka Šuica, the European Commission Vice-President in charge of organizing the conference, announced in an interview with the Financial Times that the formal launch might be postponed at least until September due to the COVID-19 pandemic. This is understandable. For practical reasons it is difficult to imagine how such a two-year reflection process with comprehensive citizen involvement would work in times of social distancing and confinement measures. And European leaders’ political attention is currently rightly focused on managing the immediate crisis.

Open Process

Either way, beyond the kick-off date and the general commitment from all three institutions, it is still unclear what the conference will look like. Before the EU switched into crisis management mode in March, the European Parliament, the European Commission, and the member states had not been able to agree on the composition, process structure, and mandate of the conference. The European Parliament was the first institution to set out its ideas for the conference, backing a rather ambitious resolution which “commits itself to a genuine follow-up of the conference with legislative proposals and possibly treaty change.”

The proposal foresees a Conference Plenary with representatives of the European Parliament and national parliaments, Council ministers, Commission Vice-Presidents, and representatives of other EU institutions, bodies, and social partners meeting on a regular basis. In parallel, citizens from all member states would gather regularly in several Citizens’ Agoras in different cities around Europe. At least two Youth Agoras are planned, too, whose members would be invited to present their findings at the Conference Plenary. A Steering Committee and an Executive Board would ensure a smooth functioning of the Conference.

The Commission’s response was relatively timid. It did not go into the same detail regarding the EU’s governance structure, nor did it refer to the possibility of institutional reform. Since then, all eyes have been on the European Council, where member states have so far shown little enthusiasm to push the Conference forward and have not even formulated a common position.

Thus, there are more questions than answers. To what extent will European citizens really be able to co-create the process throughout the duration of Conference? How often will the Conference reach out to stakeholders on the local, regional, and national level to allow for the widest possible participation and inclusion of views? How will the outcome of the Conference be translated into concrete policy proposals including legislative initiatives? Will treaty changes be an option?

The fact that the interinstitutional bargaining to define the conference’s approach and scope has not even taken place yet has lowered expectations significantly in the past months—despite initial excitement and push from the European Parliament to get the ball rolling. Even before the COVID-19 crisis management absorbed all attention, the focus had diverted from the debate on the Conference to other pressing issues such as the European Green Deal and the Greek-Turkish border crisis. Even in the Brussels bubble, where interest in such exercises is usually much higher than in the member states, it was no longer a top priority on the political agenda.

New Impulses Needed

In principal, the Conference on the Future of Europe has great potential. It can serve as an important new impulse to European democracy and bring the EU closer to its citizens, while at the same time also aiming to make progress with respect to the implementation of the EU’s key policy priorities. Yet its mandate and objectives must be made clear. Otherwise, the good intentions will backfire, eroding citizens’ trust in such exercises and more generally in the EU. There have already been enough fruitless ad-hoc or on-again-off-again participatory processes, pretending to give European citizens a say in the debate on the future of Europe. This time, the European institutions should get it right. Proper preparation is key.

Now that the formal launch has been postponed, the unexpected timeout should be used to prepare the ground for what would otherwise have likely become a “going through the motions” exercise. The far-reaching economic, social, and political consequences of the COVID-19 crisis for the EU will make the conference even more pressing.

Lockdown measures throughout Europe have already led to a sharp spike of unemployment; a deep recession looms. Cross-border solidarity has been once again severely tested as the countries most affected by the health crisis initially could not count on the support of their European partners, who instead turned inward and closed their borders. In the eyes of too many citizens, the EU played too small a role, particularly when coordinating the necessary restrictive measures and distributing medical equipment. Old conflicts between the North and the South have resurfaced, with even more intensity and emotion. And in Hungary, Prime Minister Viktor Orbán has abused the COVID-19 crisis to undermine democracy, further strengthening his autocratic rule.

Push the Member States

The public health crisis has revealed the limitations of the EU’s capacity to act and has challenged the concept of European solidarity. At the same time, it has laid bare the already existing institutional shortcomings. The Conference on the Future of Europe will not only be an opportunity to jointly assess the EU’s crisis management and come to terms with the initial lack of European action as well as the reflex for national solutions. It will also allow to explore what should really be at the core of the EU, and which public goods it should deliver to European citizens. At the same time, it can serve as an important instrument to channel citizens’ feedback and to distill necessary reforms in order to strengthen the EU’s cohesion and capacity to act—on institutional reform as well as on political substance.

The first task is to ensure that the conference will take place at all. The delay could tempt member states to scrap it entirely from the political agenda. Most of them had been rather skeptical from the beginning anyway, having expressed doubts about how effective the exercise might be and fearing it could open the door to talk of changing the EU’s treaties. As member states will have to fight the fallout of the COVID-19 pandemic in the coming months, they might completely lose their appetite to engage in such an exercise.

Therefore, the European Parliament as well as civil society organizations across Europe should push the member states to ensure that the latter stick to their commitment of launching the conference once confinement and social-distancing measures are lifted. With its recent resolution on the subject, the European Parliament has already sent a gentle reminder for it to be convened as soon as possible. And the signs are encouraging: a group of five ministers of EU affairs from Austria, Ireland, Greece, Bulgaria, and Belgium followed the Parliament urging their colleagues to commit to the conference.

Furthermore, the Parliament and the Commission should find common ground for an ambitious mandate and process to be discussed with the member states in order for the conference to be ready in time. The upcoming German EU presidency could provide an important impulse to broker an agreement between member states and steer the way toward an interinstitutional agreement. Any compromise should address the following two aspects:

Strategic Priorities

First, the participatory dimension of the conference should build on similar experiences in the past, such as the European Citizens’ Consultations that took place last year. In fact, there is a long history of efforts by the European institutions aiming to better connect citizens with the EU, which offer valuable lessons that should be taken into consideration. Experiences from democratic innovations at the local, regional, and national level across Europe should also be harvested, such as the Irish citizens’ Constitutional Convention or the Ostbelgien Citizens’ Council in the German-speaking community in eastern Belgium. Success requires clarity and clear communication of the ultimate goal of the Conference in order to manage expectations, to enable citizen involvement at both the national and transnational level, and ideally a long-term participatory process that establishes a regular communication channel between citizens, civil society, and elected representatives that goes beyond a one-off exercise.

At the same time, all stakeholders should be aware of the risks that come with organizing such a participatory endeavor: euroskeptics will be keen to push forward their own agenda calling for returning competences back to the national level. Thus, pro-integrationists should be prepared to have a convincing communication strategy throughout all phases of the conference to counter misinformation and to deliver credible responses when being confronted with dissent regarding the European project.

Second, the point of departure should be an evaluation of the main consequences of the COVID-19 crisis for the EU and its member states. However, reducing the Conference to the health crisis debate would be shortsighted. It should also concentrate on strategic priorities such as the green transition, the digital agenda, the EU’s role in the world, and democracy and governance, based on the EU Strategic Agenda 2019-2024 defined by the European Council and the von der Leyen Commission. In addition, as the EU focuses solely on fighting the pandemic and its consequences, and certain policy fields face deadlock due to longstanding conflicts, the Conference could serve as an important tool to keep reform debates alive.

Debating the EU’s strategic priorities will also reveal the necessity of institutional reform, for instance the introduction of qualified majority voting in specific policy fields. Also, other roadblocks such as electoral reform or the Spitzenkandidaten process will need to be addressed. Thus, all institutions should clearly commit themselves to deliver concrete financial, legal, institutional, and policy reforms, and—if necessary—even treaty change.

In every crisis, there is an opportunity. Postponing the launch of the Conference buys time. In a post-COVID-19 period, the need for a comprehensive European soul-searching exercise will be greater than ever. European institutions should not waste the opportunity.

The post Extra Time appeared first on Berlin Policy Journal - Blog.

© REUTERS/Fred Greaves

The coronavirus pandemic and its effects on politics, society, and the economy are a concrete example of what is meant by the still very abstract concept of disruption. In summary, “disruption” expresses the idea that the future will be completely different from the past. A radical break with everyday habits—as is the case with a pandemic—prevents an extrapolation of experiences from the past into the future.

“Disruption” in itself is not a new phenomenon. More than 100 years ago, the Austrian economist Alois Schumpeter identified “creative destruction” as the motor of economic growth. Now the coronavirus is destroying traditional business models and existing value chains. Suddenly, we can see how abruptly the old laws governing politics and society can be overridden.

Business has long been aware of the equally destructive and creative dynamics of disruptive processes. Long before the outbreak of the pandemic, digitalization and data, robots and algorithms, true auto mobility, and artificial intelligence had profoundly changed value-added processes.

A Hockey Stick Effect

Now, however, people are realizing how much can be achieved via distance learning, home office, online organization, video conferencing, and digital services. Emergency measure that prove to be a success in practice will be retained even after the pandemic. The coronavirus will accelerate digitalization across the economy, society, and politics.

New knowledge is being created in the search for effective responses to the coronavirus. This is not only useful in the fight against pandemics, epidemics, and diseases. Innovative findings from the battle against the coronavirus can be used later and elsewhere to save lives, prevent infection, and make people more active and productive.

It is therefore to be expected that there will be a hockey stick effect in this crisis, as in previous ones. At first, many things will get worse. The economy is collapsing, unemployment is rising. After a period of shock and suffering, however, there will be adjustments and counter-reactions. Innovations will lead to investments. New things will be created, the economy will recover, and society will enter a new phase of growth and prosperity at full swing. Things have always happened this way. There’s little reason not to assume it will happen again.

Viruses in Cyberspace

The pandemic has made globalized societies realize with horror how vulnerable they have become to unforeseeable, unpredictable shocks, against which they can do little, at least in the short term. The coronavirus has brutally demonstrated that the current economic and social model was geared far too much toward short-term success. By contrast, the long-term accumulation of resources for crises, disasters, or even pandemics has been massively neglected. There is a shortage of intensive care beds for the critically ill, of respiratory equipment and protective gear, as well as of medical and nursing staff.

This time—unlike with previous supply problems—globalization cannot help. In the event of a pandemic, similar shortages will become the rule worldwide. There aren’t any surpluses anywhere that could be quickly diverted, in part because in the coronavirus crisis, every national government is concerned most with its own people. Thus, national self-interest leads to the closure of borders, mothballing of airplanes, the halting of the global trade of goods, and the movement of people. Instead, digitalization is used wherever possible. Data transfer replaces the trade in goods. The home office replaces the business office. Video conferences make long-distance travel unnecessary.

Digitalization, which is now replacing globalization, also has its pitfalls. After all, the coronavirus is by no means the only—albeit frighteningly real and concretely visible—existential threat to the population and economy. There are also viruses in cyberspace that can cause immense damage and threaten human lives and societies. However, mischief and malpractice only become apparent when entire metropolitan regions are left without electricity, light or water, when the data centers of utilities, mobility, communication, or intensive care units in hospitals are no longer functioning because the Internet is paralyzed across the board, or when trade, stock exchanges and banks remain closed because online transactions cannot be verified.

An Agenda for Globalized Societies

Although not directly related, there are a number of other examples that illustrate how globalized societies have abandoned long-term protection for short-term benefits. The underspending in Europe on external security and counter-terrorism is one example. The long-standing failure to combat climate change is another. In the past, many costs that were incurred “externally”—either in other regions of the world or concerning the environment and climate—were not taken into account. However, disregarding the external costs at the expense of employees in low-wage countries, the extinction of species or global warming became impossible at last with the “Fridays for Future” movement. Even before the outbreak of the coronavirus, a rethink was underway.

The coronavirus only reinforces developments that were already evident. The perception, attention, and correction of these issues should have the highest priority on an “Agenda 2030” for globalized societies. Thus, after the end of the pandemic it will be neither desirable nor useful to return to business as usual. On the contrary, many things will have to change in order to hold on to the things that are truly indispensable. These include respecting individual fundamental rights and maximizing the chances of a long and healthy life and greater prosperity for all.

Spies and Criminals

Replacing global value chains with digital processes, online trading, data transfers, and local 3-D production on site at the customer’s premises creates completely new dependencies. Until now, individual links in global value chains were at risk of being abused. This could be individual governments threatening to impose punitive tariffs, trade restrictions, or even nationalization and expropriation in case of conflict. Another risk consisted of criminals disregarding property rights, violating patent protection, producing pirated copies, or carrying out brand piracy.

If digitalization is now changing the face of globalization, political dependencies and criminal activities will also change in character. The switch from the global trade in goods to virtual data transfer will be followed by an increase in cybercrime.

On the one side, there are private big data companies which more or less legally and openly collect company-specific data. They spy on interdependencies and networks as well as companies’ internal behavior patterns, decision-making structures, processes, and secrets. On the other hand, there are cyberattacks with the sole purpose of harming companies, personalities, government representatives, or politicians. There, the goal is to paralyze them for a while, destroy the trust that partners have in them, or undermine their public reputation.

Preventing a Virtual Pandemic

Whoever dominates cyberspace will dominate the world economy. Europe, given the absence of products and services of its own with an similar price-performance ratio, currently only has the choice who it wants to depend on: the United States or China. In the first case, “big business”—i.e. private monopolies with huge market power—threatens to collect every conceivable information about people in order to rake in “big profits” at their expense. In the second case, it is “big brother”—i.e. the monopoly of an authoritarian state capitalism—which, without hesitation or regard for privacy, pries into the most intimate corners of people’s lives.

Digitalization as a response to globalization becomes a social risk when “bot” networks manipulate populations and falsify parliamentary elections. Fake news can sow hatred and mistrust and destabilize societies. In the same way, huge dependencies arise from the use of private data clouds, online shopping, electronic data traffic with banks and insurance companies, or e-government.

We must prevent the biological pandemic from being followed by a virtual one. People should not be forced to disclose private data to combat the coronavirus if this means opening the gates to virtual viruses. Security in cyberspace is one of the central state functions in the age of digital globalization. Good protection against big data, big business, and big brother is expensive. Insufficient protection, however, is far more so. It can destroy livelihoods and, in the worst case, call into question the stability of Western societies.

The coronavirus—as all disruptive processes—is likely to be an eye-opener for Europeans. It reveals just how vulnerable liberal economic and social models have become. At the same time, the pandemic will give an enormous boost to digitalization and the data economy. This, however, will create new risks. They need to be neutralized just as resolutely and forcefully as the original pandemic.

The post The Pandemic Disruption appeared first on Berlin Policy Journal - Blog.

© China Daily via REUTERS

The coronavirus has caused a global health crisis that risks fueling a pandemic of authoritarianism, nationalism, economic autarky, and malign foreign influence of the kind that the United States and its European allies constructed alliances and institutions to guard against after 1945. This is a time for democracies across the Atlantic to help and support each other, but also to rally around protecting the free and open international order from authoritarian assault.

By virtue of their open societies, Western nations are more vulnerable to this pandemic; their governments are more limited in their ability to control citizens’ behavior than the dictatorships in China and Russia, which are not subject to the same legal constraints. At the same time, both the Chinese Communist Party and the Kremlin view the crisis now mostly playing out in the West as a strategic opportunity to extend their influence at the democracies’ expense. Meanwhile, strongmen are using the cover of the crisis to consolidate power in ways that threaten the democratic integrity of the European Union.

Four Threats to Democratic Systems

Both the US and Europe will emerge from the fog of the immediate crisis and face a new world order profoundly reshaped by COVID-19. Western democracies will grapple with a new balance between the state and the economy, new powers in the hands of governments to surveil their populations in order to manage public health, new pressures on established political parties from nationalists and autarkists on the left and the right, intensified migration pressures from nations in the Middle East and Africa unable to handle the epidemic, new forms of malign foreign influence associated with leveraged Chinese and Russian forms of health assistance, and revolutionary demands from citizens for health and welfare safety nets following the extraordinary insecurities produced the pandemic.

In this new world order, questions of democracy and governance will be more, rather than less, relevant as governmental and societal responses to the crisis expose fissures and vulnerabilities within democracies. Throughout Europe, we already see these cleavages being exploited by China and Russia. At the same time, competing narratives of unity in the face of the crisis—ranging from those who advocate a more robust response capacity at the EU level to those who emphasize national unity, sometimes with a decidedly anti-EU cast—will shape transatlantic politics for years to come. So, too, will the consequences of emergency measures and societal controls and various forms of state-driven surveillance and enforcement introduced in response to the pandemic.

Those who believe in the ultimate strength of democratic forms of government to deliver best for the people that they serve—in particular Europeans and Americans—must begin now to prepare and act to win the battle for the post-crisis narrative. Even in the midst of the crisis, at least four potential post-COVID-19 threats to the democratic systems that the US and Europe have worked so hard to build since the end of World War II are becoming evident. It is incumbent on those who believe that a strong transatlantic response to these challenges is necessary in the wake of the crisis to begin to plan now for how we will address them, together.

Freedom Takes a Back Seat

In the short term, of course, the virus is putting enormous strain on freedom of movement as most European nations have effectively closed their borders, thereby reversing one of the founding tenets of European integration: the free movement of people. At the same time, some leaders are using the opportunity presented by the pandemic to centralize control and weaken institutions that countervail executive power. In Hungary, parliament has passed State of Danger legislation allowing Prime Minister Viktor Orbán to rule by emergency decree. In both Serbia and Turkey, the governments have used the crisis to crack down even harder on the press and the capability of the opposition to function.

In the short term, democratic political and civil society leaders need to step in wherever necessary to stem moves to sidestep democratic processes, as illiberal politicians try to take advantage of the crisis to move their own political agenda forward. More broadly, in the aftermath of the crisis, democratic political leaders will need to address questions regarding how well democracies responded.

It is thus critically important that Europeans and Americans prepare for this eventuality by marshalling the resources to strengthen democratic institutions. European nation-states and the EU itself have an extensive infrastructure of such organizations at their disposal. So, too, does the US. Working together, we can effectively demonstrate what will be the real lesson of this crisis: that citizen-centered government that both communicates with and responds to the needs of the people it serves is best positioned to act effectively to meet the challenge—including supporting health and economic recovery over the long term. With a united response, we can help to build and rebuild trust between government and citizens, assist political leaders to respond in crisis situations, and amplify local, citizen-led responses.

The Temptation of Autarky

As the state takes more control over the economy in various countries in the transatlantic community, we must plan for calls for “industrial self-sufficiency” to grow louder in mainstream politics.

Few countries will want their pharmaceutical and broader medical supply chains dependent on China or other foreign countries. The question is whether this will simply be a readjustment to globalization, or whether there will be politically viable calls for each country to have its own production capacity for major products, in which case we risk reverting to a 1930s-like wave of introversion within European nations and in the US. Here, too, we risk losing a major accomplishment of the post-World War II era in Europe: the free movement of goods and services.

In fact, it is the private medical sector in the US and Europe that is most likely to come up with a vaccine for coronavirus. It is private markets on both sides of the Atlantic, not lumbering government bureaucracies, that will devise innovative health solutions to serve citizens who may expect too much from overextended governments. No amount of government spending will be capable of restoring nations to economic health should their large and small enterprises fail to lead their economies out of recession by re-hiring workers and restoring production and services. Furthermore, no nation will innovate its way out of this crisis on its own; institutionalized and multilateral forms of collaboration will be central to devising solutions to the pandemic’s fallout across so many national boundaries. Pulling up economic and political drawbridges would also only cede strategic space to Chinese and Russian efforts to build out new spheres of influence, including in eastern and southeastern Europe.

An Intergenerational Struggle?

It is now well-established that COVID-19 affects people very differently according to their age: while the elderly are especially vulnerable to succumbing not only to the virus but also to existing underlying conditions, younger people seem to have a much higher survival rate. This is a spectacular intergenerational change of fortunes in places like the south of Europe, where millennials and generation Z are the ones who have been the most socially and economically vulnerable recently—particularly in places like Italy or Spain. Now, it is the older members of society that are existentially vulnerable—and it is their turn to feel threatened by younger citizens’ visible unwillingness to change their lifestyles. This could have lasting consequences on intergenerational relations in the future and could lead to political tensions.

Additionally, data from studies we conducted in Europe indicate that the younger generations—even in advanced democracies—are much less prone to believe that democracy is the best possible form of government. Historical amnesia may be partly to blame—they don’t remember the police states that terrorized citizens behind the Iron Curtain, or the fight against fascism that occupied what Americans call the Greatest Generation. It is clear that we need a forward-looking transatlantic response to the concerns of younger generations that will have been shaped by the pressures of both the 2008 financial crisis and the coronavirus pandemic. This is a wholly different frame of reference than that of those who fought the Cold War and saw 1989 as a crowning achievement, and it will require both different forms of communication and engagement to ensure their commitment to the democratic process.

Propaganda Targets

As if the acute domestic pressures on democratic systems were not enough of a challenge, in the post-COVID-19 era, the transatlantic community will also have to contend with aggressive attempts by malign authoritarian powers to turn the crisis to their advantage.

In this regard, Europe’s southern peninsulas are the most economically vulnerable on the continent, and they are also the ones that are so far hardest hit by the virus. High levels of social contact in public spaces have contributed to the rapid spread of the virus in places like Italy and Spain, and since the confinement began, many citizens have expressed the opinion that they were left to fend for themselves by their purported friends and allies in the EU and the US—even though Western assistance to allied nations has in fact been higher (and of higher quality) than far-better-publicized Chinese and Russian forms of sometimes questionable medical support.

Chinese and Russian propagandists have picked up on this trend and launched operations to bolster their image at the expense of European governments. Chinese Communist Party propaganda is aggressively attempting to confuse people about the origins of the virus (contending that the US or even Italy were the source of the contagion), and is attempting to curry favor by sending masks and medical equipment to Italy, Serbia, and other places. Local politicians in these countries have praised the Chinese Communist Party for its generosity, and in Serbia, President Aleksandar Vucic said it most plainly on Serbian television: “European solidarity doesn’t exist—that was a fairy tale on paper,” contending that the Chinese “are the only ones who can save us.” Russia, for its part, has dispatched military medics and equipment to Italy and Greece to deal with the crisis—all while ignoring cases at home. The subtext of these efforts is that “we are all in this together,” so there’s no value any longer in continuing the EU’s sanctions on the Kremlin for its aggression in Ukraine.

In the propaganda narratives from Beijing and Moscow, there is also an obvious glorification of their respective regimes at the expense of democracies. In China, the focus is on the heroics of President Xi Jinping and the CCP, which they claim are doing what is needed to stop the spread of the virus, unlike ineffectual democracies—even though it was China’s authoritarian suppression of medical and media reporting on the virus at its inception, including the punishment of local officials who sought to sound the alarm, that helped turn COVID-19 into a global pandemic. Meanwhile, the Kremlin initially behaved as if COVID-19 had not reached the country at all and even sent scarce medical equipment abroad as part of its propaganda push. Indeed, the Kremlin seems to have devoted more resources to information warfare against the West than to protecting Russian citizens who will inevitably suffer from the pandemic.

It now seems that the tide of the narrative here may beginning to turn, as more and more stories of inter-European and US assistance efforts come to light. Similarly, it is increasingly clear that “assistance” from the CCP comes at a high price, as Chinese diplomats leverage assistance for political and economic concessions. Nonetheless, Chinese and Russian sharp-power influence in Europe was a significant and growing issue before the COVID-19 crisis broke, and there is every reason to assume it will continue afterward.

The Path Ahead

Europeans and Americans should understand clearly that both Beijing and Moscow define a strategic interest in weakening the cohesion of the Atlantic alliance in order to enhance Chinese and Russian influence in Europe at American expense. The Kremlin also defines an interest in weakening European unity, including by supporting political extremists, in various European countries in order to build out a Russian sphere of influence in the east at Brussels’ expense. Meanwhile, the Atlantic allies’ uneven and belated responses to the pandemic risk discrediting democratic systems in the eyes of fearful publics.

To meet these challenges, the transatlantic democracies must position themselves to shape the post-pandemic order. First, they must ensure that temporary measures limiting basic freedoms put in place to limit the spread of the virus remain just that: temporary. Emergency powers exercised by governments to beat back the pandemic by surveilling and controlling their citizens cannot become the norm. When the crisis is over, we are convinced that democracy will once again have proven itself vis-à-vis its authoritarian detractors to be the most effective—and certainly the most transparent and accountable—form of government in meeting the needs of the people. We must remain vigilant to push back against backsliding that undermines this basic truth: that sovereignty rests with the people and not a permanent class of political elites unwilling to yield power.

Second, democratic governments must resist the temptation to disengage their economies from one another, pursuing the fantasy that each one of them can build (or rebuild) an infrastructure making it fully self-sufficient. Economic globalization has helped produce a broadly middle-class world for the first time in human history. While countries will be more prudential about supply-chain security in the post-pandemic international economy, rebuilding prosperity will be impossible without an open international trade and investment regime. Europe and the US could even consider an economic version of NATO to protect intellectual property, consolidate free-world supply chains and innovation networks, and encourage a qualitatively superior form of market access than that accorded to imperialistic authoritarian powers outside the West.

Third, political parties, government leaders, and civil-society organizations must redouble their efforts to ensure engagement across generations in the political process to help minimize tensions between them driven by the different experiences they have suffered in the various crises that have buffeted the transatlantic space since 2008. The challenge for political parties will be giving young people a greater voice in politics so they do not become alienated and radicalized by disruptive economic conditions.

Fourth, democracies in Europe and America must further develop their capacities to push back against the malign forms of foreign authoritarian influence that risk undermining democratic institutions—and democratic unity among allies—in the West. This includes protecting their citizens from Russian and Chinese misinformation as well as piercing the information bubble that denies Russian and Chinese citizens objective news reporting and leads them to believe their governments’ self-serving and deeply anti-Western propaganda.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel, in her first national address on the pandemic, noted that the COVID-19 crisis presents the greatest challenge Germany has faced since the end of World War II. With old and new democracies working together, Europe and the United States overcame that challenge and built the most prosperous and free community of nations in the history of humanity.

Even as former enemies were able to put their immediate pasts behind them to rebuild Europe, today’s transatlantic democracies must do the same. Crises have a way of focusing the mind on what matters most. And what will matter most after the COVID-19 health crisis has passed is protecting the political liberties and democratic institutions that enable free nations to work together to serve their citizens, uphold their common security, and rebuild their prosperity.

Just as coronavirus presents a mortal threat to public health, so the aggressive authoritarianism of revanchist great powers presents a mortal threat to American and European leadership in the world. Building political resiliency to protect and sustain democracy through the pandemic will be as important as developing the medical antibodies against COVID-19 and restoring public health—and public trust in government—across the West and the world.

The post Protecting Democracy appeared first on Berlin Policy Journal - Blog.

© REUTERS/Kai Pfaffenbach

Professor Sennett, this spring, almost all of mankind is living under exceptional conditions. Will this state of emergency last? What political and social consequences do you foresee? What we see now might last for a very long time. It might be the new normal. I’ve had one similar experience back in the days in New York, shortly after 9/11, in which the building laws for new constructions were changed to say that the first eight floors of every building had to be bomb proof. It took decades to undo this extension of planning power. In a larger way, this is what Giorgio Agamben’s Homo Sacer is about: That a crisis allows the state to take extraordinary measures of control which then outlive the crisis. Not just urbanists worry that freedom of association in public places—which has to be squeezed now—will continue to be squeezed, that those rules might stay in place.

States like China are using the crisis to legitimate the increase of societal control. Do you expect more surveillance and more control in Europe, too? Not in Europe, no. But I do see it for the United States. The cliché is that the US is an individualistic country. But in fact, its impulses are quite repressive when it is faced with a crisis. In the United Kingdom, I see a different issue. There are a lot of rumors beginning about Brexit because of the pandemic. And it’s beginning to really strike people that Brexit was an enormous fraud. Many of the things we need to do, we’ll have to do with the European Union as a whole. We just missed the chance to find respirators in cooperation with other countries in the EU. Another example is climate change. The UK has disabled itself by withdrawing from the good efforts made by the EU to deal with climate change. It’s become evident to people that the government has no clue what to do right now, what could be British. It’s meaningless. So I’m really wondering if this isn’t the perfect time for asking how we might undo this disastrous mistake. It’s a nationalistic, self-imposed wound. Now, Britain is not the US or Brazil. It might be fairly nationalistic, but its population is not as debased as in America, where they believe that climate change is a Harvard plot.

What does this have to do with the pandemic? You see, a lot of the strategies for dealing with climate change that we are following at the United Nations (where I’m currently working) have to do with densifying cities and making cities more compact. Now, those strategies run up against the fact that in terms of health and healthy cities, this may not be the right strategy. I don’t think we’ll find the answer in building cities where there are no crowds anymore, or no density. We’ll have to find different ways to make cities dense while taking into account that this will not have been the last pandemic.

As the urban civil society is challenged, will we need new concepts about community? Rethink the architecture of density? Might we need to find different physical forms for density to prevent the next pandemic? This is really a subject for research as well as for policy. What is the right way to create a kind of healthy density? One of the things that we have to be very clear about is that the New York model with very tall towers and just a few elevators is a recipe for contagion. So this may be the end of Le Corbusier’s dream of a city of towers. Density is necessary, it’s the rationale for cities. It’s socially a good thing to be exposed to people who are not like yourself; there are all sorts of synergies when you have different people coming together, doing different things.

So, it’s a question of how to make it work? Yes, we have to figure out the right way. Maybe it’s perimeter housing—Blockbebauung—like you have in Berlin. In Paris, one proposal is to create something which is called fifteen-minute cities. These are nodes of density to which people can walk within 15 minutes. There is a particular Parisian inflection to it, because it would mean that key workers like those working for the government or ministries would be getting money to live closer to these ministries, so they don’t need to commute long distances any longer. But again, the question is, do you get the synergies of a big city if walking is the measure? And what would it mean for cities in the developing world, like Mexico City, if you have to walk from your home to the factory? That kind of thinking is more for the long-term, though.

Coming back to the question of density: To what extent will “social distancing” be the new normal, enforced by governments? And what are the consequences for elderly people living alone? Well, these are two different questions. If distancing became the new normal, we would have to abandon most of the public transport we have. That’s not going to happen, and that’s only one example. More generally, it’s a basic flaw in craftmanship to think that one tool serves all purposes. Distancing is a tool that’s useful right now. But if you say that’s our strategy—which is a defensive one—basically you would drive back people person by person into automobiles, thereby increasing the climate crisis. So that can’t be the way. Distancing is only a temporarily move. Is mustn’t be permanent.

And the elderly? From a demographic point of view, Europe is configured very differently from the Anglo-Saxon world. My impression is that there is a lot more inter-generational social contact with elderly people in Germany, certainly in southern Europe. One of the most striking sociological facts with regards to UK and the US is that after people become about 65, their rate of connection even with their own families drops rapidly. The US and the UK are very much orientated to the now, to the nuclear family. The elderly are sort of lost in that process. The temporary need for social isolation raises deep questions about the weakness of our civil societies. One of the marks of strong civil societies is that even if people do not see each other all the time, they are in contact with each other. This pandemic is revealing all kinds of ignored fault lines in neoliberal societies. The US, the UK, Australia—they all have very neoliberal societies which don’t help people in a crisis. Their welfare systems are abysmal because they are privatized.

With the pandemic, we are seeing a surge in the use of high tech for surveillance. Do you see a chance of the pandemic also humanizing high tech in cities? Yes, I think so! Even the surveillance devices could be humanized. Technology is neutral. It’s a tool. You can use it for good or for bad. People do share a lot more information with each other online these days, they are way much more social, which is a good thing. There is one issue which is disturbing, though, and that is the relation between the changes in the workplace that are happening because of the pandemic, and inequality. I’ve been studying labor for a long time, and I believe that we will see a kind of triage in this “working from home.” People who have middleclass jobs where they can work electronically are independent to a certain degree. But if you are a hospital worker or a garbage collector, working from home is a meaningless concept. You have to be face to face with other people. And that worries me: if there is a long-term effect from shifting more labor toward working autonomously from home, the inequalities between the working classes, the service classes, and the bourgeoisie will become even more starker. This is a gigantic natural experiment.

The interview was conducted by Martin Bialecki.

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Source: Johns Hopkins University

Lives across Europe have been turned upside down by the pandemic, with eerily quiet streets and families at home grappling with uncertainty—many of whom are turning to Steven Soderbergh’s movie Contagion or Albert Camus’ 1947 novel The Plague (its publisher is struggling with so many orders), perhaps hoping to distract themselves with past or fictional health crises.

But stranger than fiction, some governments around the world—most notably the Brazilian administration of President Jair Bolsonaro, who fired his health minister and is encouraging young people to go on with their lives as usual—have downplayed the importance of social distancing. Also, the Swedish government has not implemented lockdown measures seen elsewhere.

Other governments reacted more decisively to stop the spread of the coronavirus. They realized that the cities that reacted to the 1918 influenza outbreak, the Spanish flu, early on, by shutting schools and banning gatherings, were able to limit fatalities. The Portuguese government, for instance, reacted before any COVID-19 deaths had taken place, and had more time to prepare due to the country’s location on the edge of Europe, among other factors. Local transmission happened later than in neighboring Spain, where at the end of April, there were over 230,000 people infected, compared with around 24,000 in Portugal, according to figures from Johns Hopkins University on April 27, 2020.

The difference is even more stark when looking at the deaths-per-100,000 inhabitants ratio. The figure for Spain is 49.6, while Portugal’s is 8.8. However, it’s not generally true that small countries do better. Belgium counted 62.1 CORVID-19 deaths per 100,000 inhabitants, compared to Germany’s 7.2. Europe’s other big countries have done much worse; the figure for Italy is 44.1, for France 34.2, and for the United Kingdom 31.3.

Two Weeks Behind

“This is not a ‘Portuguese miracle’ and we have not reached the end of the pandemic to be able to make an assessment,” Filipe Froes, the head of the intensive care unit at Lisbon’s Hospital Pulido Valente and an advisor to Portugal’s health minister, told me.  

“Portugal benefited from the fact that we are two weeks behind Spain,” Froes pointed out. “We declared a state of emergency and measures of confinement at the same time as Spain and Italy and used those precious days ahead to increase the response capacity in hospitals as well as involving primary health care, so that infected patients could be treated in ambulatory care.”

Portugal could have done even better, though, Froes pointed out, had it controlled people on arrival at Portuguese airports. “There should have been an articulated response within the European Union. Just like it has economic measures it should have collective measures for health too,” he argued.

Countries in the EU have diverged on social isolation measures, money, medical equipment, and border restrictions. But one thing all these countries have in common is overworked staff in hospitals and lack of some basic equipment. Sonia Lontrao, a nurse at Lisbon’s Egas Moniz hospital, told me that medical staff like herself are working 12-hour shifts with minimum protection, putting their lives at risk.

The EU was criticized in particular for abandoning Italy during the outbreak. China stepped in to provide assistance, whereas Italy’s request for help from the Union Civil Protection Mechanism initially came to no avail. However, the EU Civil Protection Mechanism did end up sending nurses from Romania and Norway to help Italy, and Austria offered 3,000 liters of disinfectant. European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen offered “a heartfelt apology.”

The Trillion Euro Fight

 Not everyone is in apologetic mood, though. Portugal’s prime minister, Antonio Costa, recently blasted Dutch Finance Minister Wobke Hoekstra for asking the European Commission to investigate countries such as Spain and Italy for not having a financial cushion to allow them to face the COVID-19 crisis, saying his words were “disgusting.” EU finance ministers then settled on an agreement to approve a financial support package worth half-a-trillion euros. It includes €200 billion, which the European Investment Bank will lend to companies, and €240 billion in credits which the European Stability Mechanism bailout fund will make available to governments. This brings the EU’s total fiscal response to the epidemic to a least €1.2 trillion.

“It’s too early to celebrate, as none of the details have been figured out,” Mujtaba Rahman of the Eurasia Group told me. “Russia and China have intervened, to try to bolster their influence in parts of Europe where Brussels has not been forthcoming. Whether that can now be corrected with the EU’s response to the economic fallout is an open question, but the initial signs are not very promising,” Rahman added.

EU cooperation may be falling short, yet the epidemic has brought to light sporadic acts of kindness. People are looking out for vulnerable neighbors and sewing masks. Camus’ daughter, Catherine Camus, told The Guardian that the main message in her father’s book, The Plague, was that we are responsible for our actions. “We are not responsible for coronavirus but we can be responsible in the way we respond to it,” she said.

The post Europe by Numbers: No Miracles appeared first on Berlin Policy Journal - Blog.

© REUTERS/Reinhard Krause

Germany’s six month presidency of the European Union in the second half of this year could hardly come at a more important moment. As the EU’s largest and most financially powerful member, Germany must rediscover its earlier role as leader and mediator. By doing so, it can help hold the organization together, something also very much in its own interests.

To do this, however, Berlin must face up to the EU’s conflicts, both internal and external. Germany faces three challenges in Europe, all given new urgency by the coronavirus pandemic. It must reestablish cohesion within the EU, bridging the gaping divide between its northern and southern member states; it must stand up for democracy and the rule of law; and it must strengthening the EU’s international role.

Germany’s six month presidency of the European Union in the second half of this year could hardly come at a more important moment. As the EU’s largest and most financially powerful member, Germany must rediscover its earlier role as leader and mediator. By doing so, it can help hold the organization together, something also very much in its own interests.

The presence of COVID-19 in Europe was confirmed early this year. However, since the EU had no relevant powers in health policy, early countermeasures took place on local, regional, and national levels. Basic freedoms of movement within the EU were restricted overnight, in partial contravention of European law. Twelve countries, including Germany, closed their borders. In early March, Berlin imposed an export ban on personal protective equipment (PPE) for medical staff, while the French government requisitioned face masks. The absence of declarations of solidarity, let alone practical assistance, gave rise to profound political disappointment. The early response, in other words, was dominated by national unilateralism, bringing back memories of the eurocrisis.

However, the EU has shown itself capable of correcting course. Management of the outbreak was quickly taken up at the highest levels, more rapidly than during the financial crisis. The European Commission instituted weekly coordination meetings. There were joint rescue flights for European citizens stranded overseas. Coronavirus patients were transferred between EU countries. Once common rules on exporting medical supplies outside the EU had been established, most governments lifted export bans within the single market. European companies began to manufacture face masks and ventilators, while the Commission introduced the joint procurement and stockpiling of medical materials.

As with the financial and migration crises, the early months of the COVID-19 crisis showed that removing internal EU borders only works when accompanied by policymaking at a European level.

Basic Freedoms at Risk

The EU’s “common area of freedom, security, and justice” was created to support cross-border mobility and interconnection. For this integrated space to survive intact, health protection must be guaranteed as a pan-European public good, with open borders balanced against the need to protect the public.

If common health policy instruments are lacking and national health systems cannot successfully deal with the pandemic, the basic freedoms of the internal market will be cancelled out. Moreover, the EU will lose public trust if it can neither defend against dangers to public health nor come to the aid of struggling member states, helping them to help themselves.

Now, as Angela Merkel put it, the EU must confront “the greatest test it has faced since its foundation.” Insufficient preparedness in public health will now be followed by the continent’s most serious economic crisis since the Great Depression of 1929. All industrial nations seem likely to fall into recession in the first half of 2020, with long-lasting and painful consequences for their social fabric.

In March alone, Spain lost over 800,000 jobs, with unemployment expected to soon approach 18 percent. Italy, too, will likely face unemployment well above 10 percent. In France, after four weeks of lockdown, a quarter of all private sector workers are on reduced hours, with half of the economy at a standstill. The crisis threatens to hit Central and Eastern Europe just as hard.

Strengthening the Economy

Cushioning the economic crisis and the resulting social damage will thus be another crucially important responsibility of the German EU presidency that starts in July. This will initially mean rolling back restrictions on the internal market and ensuring that crisis-driven health policy does not undermine the EU. Some governments will take a greater role in industrial policy, seeking to guarantee essential food supplies and critical infrastructure. This could mean a new wave of nationalizations, as well as a more flexible interpretation of EU subsidy rules.

Despite facing the greatest economic crisis in the history of European integration, the EU needs to develop common approaches and principles in order to minimize national protectionism and reestablish European competition principles once the virus dies down. At the same time, it will be all the more important for a united EU to pursue its own global interests, with member states acting together as a common currency area, as well as on trade policy and investment regulation.

The German presidency must also address the question of additional financial cushioning. Short term liquidity has been made available through the European Central Bank and €500 billion in new financial instruments at the disposal of the European Commission, the European Investment Bank and the European Stability Mechanism. Nonetheless, fresh money will probably need to be put on the table to prevent a resurgence of tensions between northern and southern European states. Negotiations on the EU’s next “multiannual financial framework”—due to be finalized under the German presidency—may see a revisiting of more expensive policies, triggered by the COVID-19 crisis. Any revision to the EU budget would likely prioritize investment in research, technological competitiveness, and health protection, as well as measures against climate change.

Finally, the German presidency will also look to use greater international cooperation to alleviate the negative impacts of national austerity. Defense policy will be one such key area. Uncoordinated budget cuts could weaken the pooling of national defense capacities, as they did in the aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis. For this reason, Berlin will likely encourage its NATO partners and the EU to focus on defense capability, the arms industry, and their general technological competitiveness in light of the pandemic.

Social Resilience

In spite of the financial efforts undertaken by the EU, it is quite possible that the virus’s economic and social effects will promote political instability and undermine social resilience. That will intensify Europe’s vulnerability to hybrid threats. The post-2008 era saw populists, many opposed to the EU and to globalization, take their place in parliaments and even in governments. The Hungarian prime minister Viktor Orbán has used the coronavirus as a pretext to strengthen his autocratic power. Like Hungary, Poland is the subject of an EU investigation, triggered by its judicial reforms. Former Italian prime minister Enrico Letta has warned that his country could become the “Hungary of the eurozone” if Europe fails to offer adequate assistance. Even before the crisis, popular support for the EU in Italy was on the decline. In Spain, the position of Pedro Sánchez’s minority government could be significantly weakened.

At a time of increasing political polarization, weakened social resilience and  burgeoning foreign influence, basic democratic principles and the rule of law must be more actively protected across Europe. Along with existing European procedures against member states, the EU budget will be a key instrument: spending should be dependent on states upholding human rights and democratic principles, in addition to the rules of the internal market. At the same time, we must keep close tabs on how technology is used to monitor the virus, ensuring it complies with basic European rights. The definition of common criteria for ending the state of emergency will be another concern.

Europe’s vulnerabilities will need particular attention if the European economy collapses while China enjoys a comparatively rapid recovery. In a bid to boost its foreign influence, China could make liquidity available to selected European companies, banks, and governments, buying up strategic elements of European supply chains, including in Germany. The question of how much protection the EU and national governments should offer domestic companies will thus be highly political.

The coronavirus has made Europe’s international context even harder to assess. Under Donald Trump, the United States continues to undermine the structures of the international order, for example by the president’s recent decision to stop US funding for the World Health Organization. Meanwhile, reaction to the crisis has sharply highlighted the systemic conflict between China and the West. Its ongoing power struggle with China is taking the United States further down the path of isolationism. But Europe must also think about its own future supply chains, deciding which elements should be based on its own territory, particularly in pharmaceuticals and other systemically vital sectors.

No Way Around Conflict

As the international system continues to gradually unravel, the pandemic has shown the importance of close cooperation on health policy. When Germany takes over the EU presidency on July 1, it faces the acutely important task of driving short-term crisis management in the EU and among its member states. But it must also continue to develop European and international instruments able to cope with the challenges confronting us. The aim should be for Europe to emerge strengthened from the crisis. To achieve this will inevitably mean conflict, both within the EU and in its relations with other countries.

For this reason, Berlin cannot limit itself to the role of honest broker, the typical approach of the country holding the EU presidency. Germany, France, other members states, and the presidents of the various EU institutions must all energetically promote European interests and the core principles of the Union. Only in this way will it be possible to lead the EU through these complex and testing times.

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© REUTERS/Yves Herman

As often happens in disasters and wartime, leaders across Europe are riding high in the polls at the moment. Sociological studies have shown that in the initial moments of crisis, people tend to avoid negative thoughts about their governments because it makes them anxious.

As prime ministers and presidents bask in the glow of their high polling, they have been keen to run the show on their own. They have not let Brussels so much as lift a finger without their permission, nor have they coordinated with other leaders.

Uncoordinated Exits

This power dynamic is on display this week, as the European Commission adopts a pan-EU lockdown exit strategy on Wednesday. The strategy was supposed to be adopted last week, but at the last moment several EU member states including France, Spain, and Italy objected. They were concerned that any discussion of lockdown exits would be dangerous ahead of the Easter weekend when people would be tempted to go out, as they prepared to announce extensions. France, for one, will be in lockdown until May 11 at least.

These objections came despite the fact that the strategy, a draft of which governments had already seen, only contained guidelines rather than instructions for when national governments should end their lockdowns. The strategy will only communicate the European Centers for Disease Control’s advice for how restrictions should be gradually lifted and coordinated with neighbors. But that was too much for national capitals, even though they themselves had asked the Commission to draw up these guidelines on March 26.

In the ensuing week, national governments have pressured the Commission to water down the strategy so much as to make it essentially meaningless. The new draft shared with national governments on Tuesday changes the title from a roadmap toward “exiting” the lockdowns to one toward “lifting” the containment measures.

Scrubbed from the text are any mentions of an “exit.” Language saying governments “should” do things has been changed to “could.” The main recommendation is that any loosening of restrictions should be “gradual” and the general lockdowns should be replaced by targeted ones, for instance only for vulnerable groups.

Getting Restless

In the week’s delay, some national governments have become tired of waiting and have adopted their own national measures. Austria is starting its lockdown phase-out today, and Denmark and the Czech Republic have also announced their own exit plans. The Belgian government is expected to present its lockdown exit strategy tomorrow before the Commission unveils the EU strategy. National guidelines on mask-wearing have been contradictory, with Austria requiring it while other countries like Belgium are discouraging it.

What’s clear is that the Commission has lost the momentum on the exit strategy and has been preempted by national actions. Lockdown exits will probably be as uncoordinated, and perhaps also as chaotic, as their imposition. And this is far from the only area in which European countries look set to diverge.

Eurobond Divisions

Last week finance ministers from the eurozone countries—known as the Eurogroup—met for a grueling 16 hours of video conferencing over three days in a desperate attempt to overcome North-South divisions on what Europe’s economic response to the coronavirus crisis should look like. In the end, they were able to agree on making available a half trillion euros of funds available to firefight the economic fallout. But on the most contentious issue, joint guarantees on debt, they kicked the can to a summit of prime ministers and presidents on April 23.

The chief protagonists have emerged as the Netherlands on one side, representing the less-affected frugal countries of Northern Europe, and Italy on the other, representing the more-affected indebted countries of Southern Europe. They were able to reach a compromise on use of the European Stability Mechanism, an instrument set up after the 2008-12 financial crisis, which enabled both sides to declare victory. Though ESM funds normally come with conditions and oversight, that was seen as inappropriate in this crisis because the early heavily affected countries did nothing wrong. In the end they agreed on just one condition: the funds, up to 2 percent of national GDP, can only be spent on healthcare.

But on the debt issue, the Dutch as still giving a firm “nee.” Italy, France, Spain, and six other countries are asking for the eurozone to issue Coronabonds, rebranded Eurobonds. Germany’s response has been softer than its notorious resistance to Eurobonds a decade ago. The Netherlands has emerged as the most uncompromisingly staunch opponent, leading to vilification of the Dutch in Southern Europe over the past week.

Dutch Finance Minister Wopke Hoekstra says it would not be “reasonable” to “guarantee the debt of other countries.” For the Brussels press pack, it’s déjà vu. It would seem little has changed in terms of European solidarity, even in a new crisis where concerns about “moral hazard” and wasteful spending are not relevant. With little prospect of the Dutch relenting, some in the French government have floated the idea of doing regional joint bonds instead—perhaps a “Club Med Bond” for France, Italy, Spain, and Portugal.

Fraying Federations

It was only to be expected that the EU’s response to the initial panic phase of the crisis would be underwhelming. As a supranational confederation that has very few powers over health or borders, the EU isn’t built for circumstances like that. Where the EU has proven its worth in the past is in the response to crises, particularly in the economic response. But as the weeks go by, the shift to “more Europe” promised by European Council President Charles Michel is not materializing.

It is an issue being faced by federations across the world, from Russia to Brazil to the United States. On Monday two blocs of US states—a West Coast “Pact” and an East Coast “Council” —banded together to ignore the flailing federal government and form their own regional entities to coordinate lockdown exit measures. With California Governor Gavin Newsom still referring his response to that of a “nation state,” the implications of these regional decisions to ignore Washington could be profound.

It is clear that the coronavirus crisis is presenting an existential challenge to the European Union. But it is also presenting a challenge to the union of American states, one that could have long-lasting consequences. The outbreak may be global, but its effects are being felt in extremely varying ways locally, and it is not respecting national borders or federations. All governing structures are at risk.

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