Will the EU survive coronavirus?
The Week,
by
Noah Millman
Original Article
Posted By: Pluperfect,
3/29/2020 5:32:29 AM
Will the European Union be one of the casualties of COVID-19?
The worldwide pandemic has dealt a dramatic and obvious blow to the liberal ideas of free trade and freedom of movement that inspired and were inspired by the EU. The openness that made it possible to travel and do business seamlessly across a continent has provided the virus with a cornucopia of vectors for transmission. If the refugee crisis of the mid-2010s put strengthened borders back on the continent's political agenda, the pandemic has made the case for hunkering down nationally as well as individually hard to dispute.
Reply 1 - Posted by:
IowaDad 3/29/2020 5:39:02 AM (No. 361413)
Not if it continue as a confederation of nations tied by a single currency and an out-of-control bureaucracy.
For the Euro survive, the German people must massively support the economies of Italy, Spain, Portugal and Greece. They will only do that when they think of themselves as Europeans and not Germans, ie when the EU is one nation.
17 people like this.
Reply 2 - Posted by:
F15 Gork 3/29/2020 6:13:20 AM (No. 361421)
The EU is a bad idea whose time has passed....
49 people like this.
Reply 3 - Posted by:
Highlander 3/29/2020 6:23:33 AM (No. 361425)
God established the concept of languages and border in Genesis 11. Man wants every tongue to blend together into one bland slurry.
22 people like this.
Reply 4 - Posted by:
seamusm 3/29/2020 7:04:35 AM (No. 361435)
I had thought the flood of middle eastern Islamists would do it. But the stranglehold on Europe by the bureaucratic mandarins in Brussels seems almost invincible.
25 people like this.
Reply 5 - Posted by:
MrDeplorable 3/29/2020 7:28:28 AM (No. 361453)
I suggest the EU will not survive but will persist for the reason that Europe is a group of Western Civilization nations whose peoples are by nature collectivists, where America is aWestern Civilization nation that will not only persist but survive for the reason that it is a collection of people who are by nature individualists, at least now. Collectivism is the poison pill in the process of human progress.
38 people like this.
Reply 6 - Posted by:
govlawyer 3/29/2020 8:29:42 AM (No. 361502)
Texans and New Yorkers are different in many ways, but once the bell rings, they're American; we speak the same language, and we have a common heritage that by and large, is one that is not based on centuries of warfare and conquest.
My late father who was born in Sicily told me that in his opinion, the EU was doomed to failure simply because, "You can't make an Italian into a Frenchman or a Spaniard".
As Greece is seeing with Turkey's open boarders, you're doomed if you can't control your territorial integrity, and for the EU, cheap labor and political correctness are more important than taking care of their own first. Why should Italy have all the unemployment it has, and at the same time, allow Chinese guest workers to work the factories in the North?
Sadly, Lenin's observation about the sale of some rope is prophetic; thank G-d we have DJT to right our ship.
30 people like this.
Reply 7 - Posted by:
Dodge Boy 3/29/2020 8:37:58 AM (No. 361509)
The EU will do anything necessary to avoid being seen as a political failure. The system itself is not sustainable. The virus will not take the EU down. Rather, the EU's financial system which is a house of cards at best, will take it down. Commenter #1 sees it correctly. When my dad was still alive, he spoke the exact same words. As a WWII veteran, he spoke of it as the Fourth Reich.
14 people like this.
Reply 8 - Posted by:
jacksin5 3/29/2020 8:46:46 AM (No. 361525)
When England opted out of the EU, their second biggest cash cow was gone. Germany was left holding the bag to support all the poorer countries in the coalition. With the world economy crashing, at least temporarily, Brussels will be denied the funds to keep this Socialist Utopia alive.
10 people like this.
Reply 9 - Posted by:
MattMusson 3/29/2020 9:05:35 AM (No. 361546)
The Bigger Question is whether China will survive Coronavirus. It is not accident that the USSR collapsed within 3 years of Chernobyl.
There are entire sections of China that are questioning the Central Government. And, since Xi effectively blocked the regular sectional transfer of Power, we could see a revolt.
14 people like this.
Reply 10 - Posted by:
marbles 3/29/2020 9:08:24 AM (No. 361551)
The separate sovereign countries of Europe , I hope so. The European Union, hope not.
10 people like this.
Reply 11 - Posted by:
mc squared 3/29/2020 9:23:00 AM (No. 361565)
I suspect that our host's comment that 'With God's help they will' means the European people but not the Brussels oligarchy.
7 people like this.
Reply 12 - Posted by:
Catfur27 3/29/2020 9:25:12 AM (No. 361569)
...the EU ( and rest of the West) is in a grave PANIC over the possibility of getting some sniffles and a cough....and yet does NOTHING to stop the massive parasitic invasion of society-destroying muslims....??.....talk about misguided priorities
21 people like this.
Reply 13 - Posted by:
Strike3 3/29/2020 9:31:38 AM (No. 361576)
The EU's days are numbered even without Coronavirus. The pandemic known as Islam has been out of control for years and continues to spread. Miss Angela has ruined her own country.
19 people like this.
Reply 14 - Posted by:
HotRod 3/29/2020 9:32:55 AM (No. 361579)
The EU will not survive, regardless of the Chinese virus. It is already on life support. The grand socialist experiment cannot support itself. It can't even defend itself. Invasion by Muslims, many of whom are radicals, diminishes tourism. Who wants to visit a country where the restaurant you are eating in is blown up? Who wants to walk streets and visit historic sites when you must fear mugging or rape?
UE: Ununionized Europe!
16 people like this.
Reply 15 - Posted by:
planetgeo 3/29/2020 9:45:29 AM (No. 361596)
#6, is correct. The attempt to copy the United States model as a "European Union" will come apart. In fact, with Brexit, is already coming apart. Unlike the United States, which has common language, common history, and most important, common shared ideology as enshrined in its Constitution, the European countries only have a common financial interest (the Euro, and trade based on it) to keep it together. In times of great crisis, they will not help each other out nor strengthen the bonds connecting them. If anything, old hostilities will resurface to accelerate the split.
20 people like this.
Reply 16 - Posted by:
FLCracker 3/29/2020 10:38:38 AM (No. 361640)
Europe survived the Black Plague, so expect it will.
But like the aftermath of the Plague, it won't be the same.
8 people like this.
Reply 17 - Posted by:
FLCracker 3/29/2020 11:01:54 AM (No. 361672)
If you go back and look at the death certificates of people who died during the Spanish Flu pandemic, at least here in the U.S., many, many have cause of death listed as pneumonia, not influenza. Of course, one of the reasons they succumbed to pneumonia is they were weakened by the Spanish Flu. (No penicillin yet, either.)
How the counted these deaths, I have no idea, but hey, statistics.
4 people like this.
Reply 18 - Posted by:
NotaBene 3/29/2020 11:08:48 AM (No. 361683)
The Europeans are composed of many Nations. They cannot be brought under a single command. Italians and Spaniards were glad to receive German capital once but at one point the German money will not be enough. The French want to direct it all but are a weak nation that failed the test of war. Czech and Slovak nations divorced, as did Bosnians, Serbs and Slovenians. Brexit will save the United Kingdom, and the other Nations should wake up.
7 people like this.
Reply 19 - Posted by:
kdog 3/29/2020 11:52:41 AM (No. 361769)
Why does it matter to me? The reason the EU was established was to try to supplant the United States as a superpower and replace the dollar as the universal money measurement with the Euro.
10 people like this.
Reply 20 - Posted by:
Highvoltage 3/29/2020 12:11:35 PM (No. 361810)
Bureaucracies are an albatross around the neck of society wherever they are. They stifle, strangle by limiting freedom, creativity and innovation. It can limit the production of a cure or vaccine. What is Communism but one huge bureaucracy in which those at the top feed off the rest of society and regulate and strangulate their expression and innovation.
6 people like this.
Reply 21 - Posted by:
Omen55 3/29/2020 12:16:13 PM (No. 361822)
Reality bites the EU's throat & blood is gushing.
4 people like this.
Reply 22 - Posted by:
JHHolliday 3/29/2020 2:39:29 PM (No. 362012)
Those unelected 'elites' running the EU bureaucracy have been living like oil sheiks. Very little work, highly paid and they get to put 100 euro bottles of wine on the expense account. You can bet they will do everything they can to keep that useless union going.
6 people like this.
Reply 23 - Posted by:
Lawsy0 3/29/2020 5:22:47 PM (No. 362188)
The European Union was one of the worst ideas of this or any other century. They dreamed it up as soon as the USSR fell apart. USSR came about after the Nazi's bought the farm. The Nazi's came about because the Russians whupped their butts in WWI. Didn't whup'em badly enough.
0 people like this.
Reply 24 - Posted by:
DVC 3/29/2020 6:25:47 PM (No. 362243)
We can hope that some day, maybe not too far off, the Euro will be a curiosity, not actual money.
1 person likes this.
Reply 25 - Posted by:
The Remnants 3/29/2020 6:31:25 PM (No. 362250)
Saw an extraordinary article on Church Militant site earlier that told me again that God knows everything - past, present, and future. Not only does He want to save Europe and its people, but He wants to save the rest of the world as well. The article told about a young girl who suffered a martyr's death in 170 A.D. She was declared a saint and someone we can pray to for protection against plagues and pandemics. Her name is Corona. She is Saint Corona. The news is already all over social media throughout the world.
Anyway, Church Militant added a few more articles for today's page, so now you have to pull it up separately. The article is entitled, "St.Corona Rediscovered", March 26, 2020, Church Militant.
She is also connected to the town of Anzu, a town in northern Italy which is the center of the pandemic in that country.
Also, a prayer to St. Corona to ask for her intercession. Really interesting set of circumstances and worth reading to get the whole story.
1 person likes this.
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