Posted on 04/24/2020 5:54:29 PM PDT by marshmallow
ROME - Italy today marks day 46 of its nationwide lockdown caused by the coronavirus, which may help explain the impatience with which many Italians view today’s video summit of EU leaders to discuss a shared approach to recovery from the pandemic - a summit which, according to news reports, will not even be “decision-making” in nature.
“All this is an ongoing process,” one EU official said in advance, so today’s virtual gathering “won’t give all the answers on the numbers of the next EU budget or on what innovative instruments will be fielded to respond.”
The fact that the EU is almost two months into arguably the greatest crisis in its 63-year history and still cannot agree on a common strategy has generated wide frustration, especially among southern European states such as Italy and Spain which have been disproportionately harder hit with respect to northern nations such as Germany and the Netherlands.
The most immediate political result is that it’s no longer just Europe’s right-wing populists, such as Marine Le Pen of France or Matteo Salvini of Italy, who are questioning whether the EU has a future.
Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte of Italy, for example, recently gave an interview to the TV service of the German newspaper Bild in which he declared, “If Europe isn’t up to the challenge, then we’ll have to abandon the European dream and say that everyone acts for themselves.”
(It’s no accident, by the way, that Conte chose a German outlet to deliver that message, since his principal antagonist has been Germany and Chancellor Angela Merkel.)
Conte has been pushing the EU to create what are called “coronabonds,” which would be instruments for underwriting the new debt member states are compelled to undertake in order to stabilize their economies, offer short-term relief to unemployed........
(Excerpt) Read more at cruxnow.com ...
The ImPopester is more like a non-European non-Pope.
Pope Soros.
In a world with a free, unbiased media this article woud be titled:
Communist Pope Mounts Defense of Communist-Islamist Europe Amid chicom sneak virus-attack...
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