The nature of Europe became one of my preoccupations through lockdown, in part for family reasons as my partner, Judith Herrin, finalised a history of its origins: Ravenna, Capital of Empire, Crucible of Europe. Originally intended as a brief explanation of the unequalled concentration of the Italian city’s dazzling, early Christian mosaics, it took her nine years and turned into a reframing of the emergence of ‘West’ and ‘East’ between the fourth and eighth centuries.
As the arrival of page proofs and the correction of chronologies gripped our domestic life, the European Union confronted a far more important, indeed life or death moment. The impact of Covid 19 has intensified existing inequalities. It does so within societies and it is doing so between the countries of the EU. Under these circumstances, as President Macron was right to insist, should the EU prove incapable of becoming a zone of solidarity it would lose all justification and break apart. The stronger economies have to find a way to assist the weaker.
After five days of debate Europe’s leaders agreed that the EU should issue bonds worth €750 billion to assist member states' recovery from the impact of the pandemic – to be distributed on the basis of their need – but not to mutualize their separate debts. The experts responded in line with their predilections. Tim Garton Ash lauded German wisdom, Yanis Varoufakis was scornful of the deal, Ambrose Evans Pritchard foresaw a reckoning postponed, George Soros judged it inadequate, blaming the selfishness of the ‘frugal’ northern states. All agreed the EU had survived to live another day.
