The CV Crisis As A Blueprint For EU Superstate

The Covid Crisis Has Helped Make the Blueprint for a European Superstate

Claudio Grass

After intense negotiations, long days and nights of clashes, and a distinctly sour note underlying the entire summit, European Union leaders finally agreed on an unprecedented €1.82 trillion ($2.1 trillion) budget and covid recovery package. This agreement provides €750 billion in funding meant to counter the impact of the pandemic and also includes €390 billion in nonrepayable grants to the hardest-hit EU members, with Italy and Spain being the main recipients.

The harsh negotiations brought to the surface once again the deep economic, structural, and cultural divide between north and south. This divide has been at the core of every serious political and economic crisis in the bloc so far, and its reemergence served as yet another reminder of how unnatural, forced, and unsustainable the integration vision of the Europhiles really is. 

Their wider strategic aims, much like this covid relief package itself, are nothing more than a massive redistribution of wealth and a vain effort to impose uniformity on a radically diverse group of national identities, economic profiles, and local political realities.

This brings us to the very practical shortcomings of the mechanics of this relief plan. All these loans and handouts will be financed through an unprecedented amount of debt, which is unsustainable and myopic in and of itself. The fact that this debt is shared, however, makes this “historic deal” all the more insidious, intensely political, and dooms it to failure. 

This deal signaled the official adoption of the idea of debt mutualization as a funding tool, which clearly paves the way for far deeper EU centralization, even greater powers of taxation and, Brussels's much more direct political power over national governments.

It might be wrapped in idealistic and melodramatic language, e.g., “rescuing our shared European future,” but what this deal is really about is a blatant power grab. 

The self-inflicted damage caused by the shutdowns and the lockdowns has been effectively misattributed to the coronavirus itself, which has allowed politicians and Eurocrats to present this recession, that was already evident since the end of last year, as a natural disaster and therefore nobody’s fault. In turn, the resulting economic fallout and the deep financial crisis affecting countless households has been used as an excuse to usher in policies geared towards more centralization. Thus, the answer to all our current problems is “a stronger EU,” even though it was that exact mindset that caused them in the first place.

In this light, the “cure” that is forced upon all Europeans now is not just worse than the disease; it is the disease.