Europe is struggling with the politics of pandemic. How bad could it get?
(Alamy)
On the Continent, the fourth wave of Covid has brought with it a tide of new restrictions — and of protests. Today Austria introduces a full-scale lockdown, with the prospect of compulsory vaccination for all adults early next year. Belgium and The Netherlands have partial lockdowns and other countries are likely to follow suit. Soaring case numbers have brought health services, already full to capacity, close to being overwhelmed. Cold weather, low vaccination rates, flu and Covid have combined to create a perfect storm.
As the pandemic sweeps across mainland Europe yet again, ugly clashes between anti-lockdown campaigners and police have erupted in several cities. What is striking is how quickly the far-Right has latched onto these protests and is exploiting them for its own purposes. This was most obvious in Vienna, where Nazi swastikas (which are illegal there) appeared at a weekend protest, along with yellow stars — an obscene comparison between those who refuse to be vaccinated and Jewish victims of the Holocaust. The far-Right Freedom Party, which for the past year has been in opposition to Austria’s ruling conservative-Green coalition, now accuses the government of imposing a “health dictatorship”.
Of course opinions are bound to differ over the wisdom of lockdowns, vaccine passports and other prophylactic measures, although there is a scientific and popular consensus that doing nothing is not an option. But there is no excuse for spreading lies and whipping up mass hysteria, as the hardline protesters are doing. The distinction between anti-vaccine and anti-lockdown protests has been almost entirely elided, as conspiracy theories abound. Indignantion over the temporary suspension of civil liberties may be understandable, but violence of the kind that erupted in Brussels, Rotterdam, and The Hague implies that much older hatreds are bubbling up from below.
For the moment, hardline nationalist parties in the bigger countries — Germany, France and Italy — are holding fire, wary of associating themselves with chaos and contagion at a time when voters live in fear of both. With the EU average for receiving the third “booster” jab at less than 4 per cent, compared to more than a quarter in the UK, Europe faces an uphill struggle to inoculate populations in time to protect the most vulnerable during the winter ahead.
Leading politicians of the Right, such as Matteo Salvini in Italy and Marine Le Pen in France, are wary of risking their reputations by attacking anti-Covid measures in the manner of Donald Trump. By the same token, however, Europe’s leaders are walking a tightrope, fearful of plunging their economies back into recession and laying themselves open to attack. Macron and Merkel, still at the helm of France and Germany respectively, are steering a middle course between draconian restrictions and allowing the coronavirus to spread unchecked.
The politics of the pandemic are now as problematic in Europe as at any time in the past two years. How far do policies balance carrot and stick to encourage the “vaccine hesitant” to accept the jab? Penalising these groups, who number more than a third of the adult population in some countries, risks turning them into anti-vaccine militants. But allowing them free rein places other people who are too young to qualify for the booster at risk.
Even within the UK there are wide variations in the numbers who have so far received the booster, from over 28 per cent in Scotland to just 17.4 per cent in Northern Ireland. Indeed, some 15 per cent of the Northern Irish population aged 12 or over has still not had the first dose, though uptake has risen sharply in recent weeks. The new readiness to accept the jab may be due to the fact that infection, hospitalisation and death rates in the Province are now the highest in the UK and also higher than in the Republic. At least the potential for political violence in Northern Ireland has not been exploited by extremists in connection with Covid or the vaccine — so far.
Across the Channel, however, political polarisation around the pandemic is not merely a distant prospect but a present reality. Unless the authorities can rapidly roll out their booster programmes, the Continent — which already resembles a pressure cooker — could explode into violence on the streets. If law and order are allowed to collapse, the decline of populism could go into reverse.
Where is the European Union in all this? A year ago the Commission and other EU institutions were trying to co-ordinate the vaccination programme, though without conspicuous success. National governments then quietly took back control. Now they too are struggling, but Brussels is still lying low. Once bitten, Ursula von der Leyen, the Commission President, and her colleagues are twice shy of getting sucked into pandemic politics. If the far-Right tries to ride on the back of popular protest, however, the European institutions will not be able to stay above the mêlée.
The pandemic remains perhaps the greatest test of Europe’s cohesion and hence also of the efficacy of its institutions. As the fourth wave breaks over the Continent, the EU is neither helping nor hindering the fightback against Covid. That is hardly a ringing endorsement of the European idea. No wonder people look for leadership to Paris, Berlin or Rome, rather than Brussels. It is the nation state, not EU federalism, that will save Europe.
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