Coronavirus: EU crisis chief calls for more powers to fight pandemics

The European Union’s executive body was hampered in its ability to react to the coronavirus pandemic by limits placed on it by member states, and should be given more power, its commissioner in charge of crisis management Janez Lenarcic has told The Irish Times.

When the Slovenian diplomat was appointed to the crisis portfolio under President Ursula von der Leyen last year, he never imagined a role usually dedicated to issues like international aid and forest fires would put him front and centre in the bloc’s response to a epoch-shaping pandemic.

"Not only Europe, the entire world was not prepared. Nobody expected it would be so huge, that it would spread so fast so far all over the globe," Mr Lenarcic recalled in an interview with The Irish Times and other media. "Because nothing like this can be recalled in living memory." It has been a major challenge for the EU, shutting down free movement, hampering trade, and revealing divisions between member states as they struggle to co-ordinate a joint response to an economic downturn forecast to be the worst in a century. The commission has been accused of being slow to react. In late February, after the disease had already begun killing people in Italy, Ms von der Leyen travelled with a large delegation to Ethiopia to talk about the EU's Africa strategy. The day before Austria shut its Italian border on March 9th, the start of a chaotic cascade of closures, she held a press conference to mark her first 100 days in office. But Mr Lenarcic denied that the commission was blindsided.

"We warned about this virus at the end of January, and called on member states to prepare for all scenarios. I have to say that not many people were interested in what we were saying then. That's a fact." While the commission can propose EU legislation and leads implementation, it does so at the behest of member states. It does not have the powers in the key areas of health and border control, which are the preserve of national governments. It advised its own staff against non-essential travel to China, but could not do so the same for the public.

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“We don’t have legal grounds to issue travel advisories for EU citizens,” Mr Lenarcic said. “It would have helped if the commission had more powers...This experience shows that there is perhaps a good reason to do more things in health and civil protection at European level.”

Stockpile

One new step that has been agreed is to build an EU strategic reserve of medical equipment. The process relies on member states volunteering to purchase and store equipment. Mr Lenarcic wants the commission to have the power to do this directly, and to distribute the stockpile according to need.

The EU’s emergency response system currently relies on voluntary national donations. When Italy appealed for help other EU states were themselves scrambling for supplies, and China responded with aid before any EU country.

“In a village when one house is on fire neighbours will come and help you. But when all houses are on fire…then it’s more difficult for such a system to operate.”

For now a return to the kind of travel between EU states that was normal before March appears a long way off.