Europe calmly awaits the second wave as a political storm brews in a divided Britain

Over the summer, with Covid-19 laying waste the economies of Europe, most acutely those of Italy and Spain, it was national leaders, led by Germany’s Angela Merkel and France’s Emmanuel Macron, who answered Europe’s call. Ursula von der Leyen, the newly-installed Commission president, certainly played a role. She was among those who sounded the alarm. But without Merkel and Macron, she could have done little.

Von der Leyen’s attempt to put together a common procurement scheme for the purchase of medical equipment achieved little, and given that the Commission’s 2014-2020 budget was all but exhausted, there was zero possibility of an independently funded grand gesture.

As it turned out, Europe’s resources were not yet exhausted. The money tree was shaken and €750 billions-worth of promissory notes came fluttering to the ground. There was a catch, of course – there always is. More than half the money would take the form not of grants, but of cheap loans, with strings attached. Nor would the disbursement come all at once. The first payouts aren’t expected until next year.

Still, three quarters of a trillion euros is a lot of cash in anybody’s books. The Apple Corporation, newly revealed to have a market value of more than two trillion dollars, might sneer. But Italy, Spain and many of the one-time East Bloc countries grasped at the lifebelt thrown in their direction like drowning sailors in a storm-tossed sea.

It is a measure of the relative quiet that has since descended over Brussels that the European Council and Commission felt able this week to give €53 million to the hard-pressed Republic of Belarus, fifty-million of which will be for Covid-relief, with the rest to assist victims of government repression and injustice.

Also this week, the Merkel-Macron train trundled on with a meeting yesterday at the Fort de Brégançon, the French President’s agreeable Mediterranean retreat, at which the two leaders, wearing masks for the cameras, discussed the crises in Belarus, Lebanon and Mali. No doubt they also touched on the upcoming US elections and the ongoing post-Brexit trade talks with Britain.

As a rule of thumb, the big countries of Europe have experienced significantly less hysteria in the late summer than has been the case in Britain. It’s not that the coronavirus crisis has ceased to preoccupy the governments of the 27; rather, they have settled into the new normal with less fuss and recrimination than in the UK.

Cases in France and Germany are rising, mainly in city clusters, but the response so far had been measured. The same is true in Europe generally, where there is a near-universal assumption that a second wave of the virus will hit this autumn and winter, with unpredictable results. The difference, when compared with Britain, is that EU ministers, officials and institutions look to have reached an accommodation predicated on the belief that what can reasonably be done is now (at last) being done and that there is no point in constantly allocating blame.

It is noticeable that while in the UK this month the release of examination grades immediately became a focus for nationwide division, pitting the people against both the Government and the system, in France a similar procedure was followed. The French grades allocation process was complete with provision for reviews, that, overall, with a few grumbles along the way, was accepted as the fairest way in which to proceed. Details of how the system would work under Covid conditions were announced by the minister on April 3; the results were posted on July 7. The Bastille was not stormed. No call was issued to bring back the guillotine.

In Germany, groups of socially-distanced students in all 16 states sat for their Abitur much as ever. They wore masks and took the exams in their classrooms, with the windows open, rather than in the customary halls. Next month they will either enter the workforce or else begin their studies at the country’s 121 universities, 220 technical schools and 58 colleges of art, music, theatre and film.

Crisis? What crisis?

Even in Italy, the home of comic opera, there are signs that the nation is starting to pull together. Italians are learning to live with Covid. The melodrama that characterised their first response to the virus has slowly given way to a resigned acceptance. Even the politicians have cottoned on to the new public mood. They know that there is help on the way and that nothing is to be gained by taking their begging bowl around Europe a second time.

On the schools front, la maturità, Italy’s extremely cumbersome and traumatic system of academic assessment, gave way this year to a single, all-purpose examination, the results of which were combined with past grades and teacher assessments. So successful did this prove that it may even form the basis of how things are done in the future. There was no March on Rome. The existing crazies in the Parlemento were left to enjoy their summer unmolested.

Not that everything is rosy in the European garden. Next month, MEPs in Strasbourg will resume their consideration of the inter-governmental rescue and recovery fund. In July, they recorded their displeasure over the fact that much of the money promised will take the form of loans, not grants. There was also concern that East Bloc recipients would be awarded their handouts without a requirement that they adhere to European democratic or legal norms. On the “prudent” right, there was disquiet over the size of the fund, which, given that it is to be raised in the name of all 27 members states, could hang over the budget and its successors for decades to come.

But the charm of the European Parliament has always been that, outside of the treaties, it exercises responsibility without power. At the end of the day, the nation states have spoken and Pandora’s Box has been opened. As President Trump might say, it is what it is.