I may be misremembering how the COVID response went, but I remember the EU not doing a whole lot in the early days of the pandemic. It was mostly national governments locking down and taking precautions within their own borders.
Don’t get me wrong, I like the EU. But it is times like these when I wished it was a little faster to respond to existential threats.
No, no, you remember the same that I do. But the early response to COVID would have been a national responsibility anyway, I believe.
What the EU did that was swift and decisive was to fork out huge amounts of cash to soften the financial blow, based on loans that the EU took on. It was the very first time the EU and ECB took on large debt, and instead of going through the infinitely slow process that financial decisions usually take, it was done quickly and without much thinking (so much so that nobody knew who and when was going to repay those loans).
I may be misremembering how the COVID response went, but I remember the EU not doing a whole lot in the early days of the pandemic. It was mostly national governments locking down and taking precautions within their own borders.
Don’t get me wrong, I like the EU. But it is times like these when I wished it was a little faster to respond to existential threats.
No, no, you remember the same that I do. But the early response to COVID would have been a national responsibility anyway, I believe.
What the EU did that was swift and decisive was to fork out huge amounts of cash to soften the financial blow, based on loans that the EU took on. It was the very first time the EU and ECB took on large debt, and instead of going through the infinitely slow process that financial decisions usually take, it was done quickly and without much thinking (so much so that nobody knew who and when was going to repay those loans).