Ethan Lou: Back where I spent my childhood, the COVID-19 crisis has thrust an uncomfortable truth into the fore, that European solidarity is weakening
German Chancellor Angela Merkel looks on next to French President Emmanuel Macron during an EU summit in Brussels on July 20, 2020
“The police will be under an obligation to check compliance,” read a “Decree” from the southeastern state of Bavaria. In the husk of downtown Bayreuth, I was reliving what I had just left behind, like some terrible version of Groundhog Day. Europe did manage some solidarity eventually, with various forms of aid flowing from the less to the more affected countries. But the trickle of that was slow. The first hints of France and Germany’s trillion-dollar recovery fund came nearly three months after the first lockdown of parts of Italy.
Yet solidarity is about more than just the continent. The EU is an anchor for the current liberal international order, alliances, institutions and a rules-based system dominated by Western democracies and their values. Keeping faith with it formed the foreign-policy premise for middle powers such as Canada for more than 70 years.
Challengers have already taken notice. The EU has accused China and Russia—which deny the allegations—of using “targeted influence operations and disinformation” online to “undermine democratic debate,” seeking to ride the bent back of what they hope to be a new sick man.
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