Even Ursula von der Leyen, now head of the European Commission and a former doctor, could not provide a competent EU response to the pandemic. Officials did not know or even wanted to know anything about the threat looming over Europe. The consequences did not keep them waiting.
This is stated in the article of “The Guardian” devoted to how and why Europe found itself in the epicenter of the pandemic.
According to media reports, the first warnings of dangerous disease outbreaks in China were issued by the EU Public Health Agency and the European Centre for Disease Control and Prevention back in late December. Naturally, no one paid attention to the statements when Europeans were preparing for New Year’s celebrations.
On January 17, the issue was already raised at the level of the Health Security Committee of the European Commission, but only 12 EU countries and a representative of Great Britain participated in the negotiations. Officials then considered it ineffective to check the symptoms of coronavirus at airports, although 300 thousand Europeans were to return from China in January after the Chinese New Year celebration. Moreover, in the following weeks, EU governments took unilateral measures, ignoring the need to coordinate them with the EC committee.
The publication also drew attention to how Ursula von der Leyen behaved. She chaired the European Commission at the end of last year, until then she was the German defense minister, but before her political career she was a doctor. This factor seemed to give her a better understanding of what was going on, but another problem arose.
“The Commission should have taken control earlier”, – said an EU official on condition of anonymity. – “Von der Leyen is smart, but she is new to Brussels and relies on a couple of people from Berlin who also have no experience in the commission and what they can do. You don’t ask Member States if they want coordination, you just coordinate. Health is a national competence, but you can act faster.”
European Commissioner Janez Lenarcic told the newspaper that the first full meeting of the crisis coordination committee was held only on January 28. Back then, officials were already taking the threat seriously, he said. A press conference was planned after the meeting, but the journalists simply ignored it.
“We went to the press conference, and the press room was almost empty”, – Lenarchic recalled. – “We called on all Member States to be ready, and we asked them to take it seriously and prepare. There was a lot of echoing from the empty room. But we were still hoping for echoes in the media the next day. We didn’t find this because all the media attention in Brussels at the time was devoted to the last plenary session of the European Parliament in which British members participated.”
Meanwhile, the coronavirus was already spreading throughout Europe. So, on January 30 the coronavirus was found in two Chinese tourists in Rome. Only then did Italy stop air travel with China. A meeting of EU health ministers was expected, but the preparation took as much as 3 weeks.
Against this background, it turned out that there is practically no strategic stock of medical masks in Europe. Ironically, it had been before and kept for years. Back in 2011 France had 1.7 billion masks in its stock. Later, all this was simply destroyed for want of it.
As a result, EU countries began to impose restrictions on the export of medical products. The masked trucks were stopped literally at the borders. At the same time, one of the sources told journalists that the personal protective equipment supplied to the EU in the ports of Germany and France was “just stolen. By that time, Ursula von der Leyen’s attempts to take the lead were already meaningless, as were the European commissioners’ appeals for unity and solidarity. Even Germany eventually closed the borders unilaterally, finally paralyzing the EU.
“It’s not a problem to close the border, but you have to talk to your neighbor on the other side, and some people didn’t”, – said Lenarchic. – “It was wrong and it caused a lot of problems. First of all, it prevented the flow of goods, which is dangerous not only for the functioning of the single market, but also for the reaction to coronavirus, because some of these goods are needed, for example medical equipment, not to mention food.”
The apogee of European shame, however, was the events of February 26. By that time, the number of infected Italians was tripling every 48 hours. The country’s hospitals were already overcrowded and the doctors had no masks or equipment. At that time, Italian Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte appealed to his colleagues for help.