The German radical right are not so hit by the virus: a reply to Hans-Georg Betz

The EU has failed in its response as a solidarity community for a long a time now. This longstanding institutional decline began with the financial crisis in 2008, the ‘refugee crisis’ and now the Covid-19 crisis. Luigi Scazzieri from the Centre for European Reform writes:

“Over the past decade, Italy has gone from being one of the most enthusiastic supporters of greater European integration to one of the most eurosceptic member-states. Many Italians felt that Italy did not receive much European solidarity during the eurozone crisis, and that the Union served as an enforcer of damaging austerity policies. The damage to Italians’ view of the EU was then compounded by the bloc’s response to the migration crisis. Italy took in 650,000 migrants between 2014 and 2018, and efforts to distribute these among other EU countries were largely symbolic.”