Luuk van Middelaar on the EU's response to the corona crisis
In recent weeks, Luuk van Middelaar has commented widely in the European press on the EU response to the corona crisis.
He drew on parallels with the euro crisis and migrant crisis in predicting a strengthening in central executive agency in the field of public health and the establishment of more institutionalized solidarity, while underlining possible tensions between public opinions across Europe as a result. Luuk also pleaded for a temporal perspective, in order to avoid too hasty conclusions on the EU’s alleged imminent death and to distinguish between the imminent public health crisis, the absolute priority now, and the socio-economic and public debt crisis, which will hit us soon. “Today we are fighting the virus not yet the Italian spreads.” See his interview in Le Monde (1 April), his comments in The Guardian (2 April) and in Il Foglio (26 March), his brief contribution to "Carnegie Europe” (26 March) and his interviews in L’Echo and Le Soir (both on 4 April). In his weekly NRC Handelsblad column, Luuk brought to the attention of a domestic audience that the Dutch number of Corona-related deaths per million inhabitants was third in the EU-27 (at the time of writing), after Spain and Italy — nuancing thinking of a North-South divide in this respect.