Worldwide Pandemic, European Responses

The ongoing COVID-19 pandemic has exposed the fragility of the European Union as it led to uncoordinated, divergent approaches by the European Union’s Member States in the quest to stop the spread of the virus and protect their citizens’ health. One of the reasons for the lack of coordination certainly lies in the fact that healthcare remains a competence of the member states. Although the EU’s role should be complementary to the member states’ policies, the individualistic approaches by the EU governments and the lack of information sharing about them made such coordination nearly impossible at the beginning of the pandemic. As most Member States are slowly easing lockdown measures with daily infection rates and casualties fortunately decreasing, the EU seems to slowly find its role in the crisis - having recently unveiled the proposal for a new Health programme (EU4Health) as well as increased resources to build a more resilient EU.