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The rift within the European Union has been growing over the inability of the bloc to respond properly to the COVID-19 outbreak and assist the most affected states.
So far, the biggest EU achievement in the field is the March 27 decision to take two weeks to consider a plan on how to help the affected states. Such a stark rebuke to Italy and Spain caused an expected negative reactions. Italy’s Prime Minister Guiseppe Conte warned that the EU project might “lose its foundations” if it fails to stand up against the crisis.
“If Europe does not rise to this unprecedented challenge, there is a danger that the European house loses its foundations before the eyes of our citizens,” Conte told Il Sole 24 Ore newspaper.
He described the current situation within the EU, especially in Italy’s relations with Germany as a “hard confrontation”.
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The reason of tensions is not only the unwillingness of separate EU states to help the affected countries with specialists and medical supplies at any kind of really notable extent, but also the funding issue. The German-led part of the bloc fierecely reists Italian and Spanish requests to help their economies via the EU official bodies.
