“… People will say ‘What is this great journey that you [the EU] are offering? These people won’t protect you in a crisis, nor in its aftermath, they have no solidarity with you… When immigrants arrive in your country, they tell you to keep them. When you have an epidemic, they tell you to deal with it. Oh, they’re really nice. They’re in favour of Europe when it means exporting to you the goods they produce. They’re for Europe when it means having your labour come over and produce the car parts we no longer make at home. But they’re not for Europe when it means sharing the burden.’”
Not many would have imagined these words would be uttered by the man deemed the potential saviour of the troubled European project. Not anti-EU propaganda by Matteo Salvini or Viktor Orban – too busy taking full power at home to engage in intellectual discussions about the future of Europe – but a statement given by the French President, Emmanuel Macron. His words, a warning of the sentiment upon which euro-scepticism will flourish if countries fail to give a common European response to COVID-19, signal the current point of inflection posed by the coronavirus pandemic.
The outbreak’s ripple effects intensify wherever the social order heavily depends on the unequal accumulation of capital. As the crisis puts into question exploitative economic dependencies that subsist with little to no democratic basis within the Eurozone and beyond, it calls governments across the globe to politicize and transform our social, economic, and democratic horizons. However, the same planetary challenge prompting governments and citizens to consider deep societal changes has also accentuated the weak transformative capacity of the EU architecture, international organizations, and decision-making processes.
