16 PAGES OF CORONAVIRUS COVERAGE INSIDE
POLITICO.EU
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MARCH 19-25, 2020
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TIMES SQUARE, NEW YORK
THE STREETS OF TEHRAN
Far left: As the city braces for a likely shutdown this week, masks are the most popular fashion accessory in midtown and beyond.
Firefighters disinfect roadways in the southern part of the city. The coronavirus has hit Iran particularly hard.
MARK PETERSON/ REDUX
ATTA KENARE/ AFP VIA GETTY IMAGES
VOLUME 6, NUMBER 10
THE WORLD ‘AT WAR’ SAN FRANCISCO
ROME
NEW YORK
PARIS
Far left: A single car crosses the Bay Bridge from Oakland.
Near left: A lone tourist takes in the crowd-free Pantheon.
Above: A worker rounds up shopping carts at a grocery store.
Main photo: With France on lockdown, apartment-dwellers stay home.
CAIMI & PICCINNI/REDUX
YUKI IWAMURA/ REDUX
MARTIN BUREAU/AFP VIA GETTY IMAGES
CARLOS AVILA GONZALEZ/ SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE
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March 19, 2020 Page 2
EU CONFIDENTIAL The dead-tree version of the No. 1 EU news and politics podcast. Your guide to the good, the bad and the absurd in European politics.
PRESENTED THIS WEEK BY SHELL
BY CRISTINA GONZALEZ AND ANDREW GRAY
EU CONFIDENTIAL IN FOCUS: ENERGY
What we’re talking about this week Can Europe get a grip? As COVID-19 spread across Europe, EU governments threw up export barriers and closed down borders. Is a sense of European solidarity now emerging or is every country still fighting its own corner? How to govern in the corona era: Faced with shutdowns and lockdowns, the EU is having to rethink the way it takes decisions. Tips for staying sane at home: From their bunkers across Europe, the podcast panel share ideas on how to survive the suspension of normal life.
Meet the power players The coronavirus eclipses everything these days but other big issues haven’t gone away. Among them is Europe’s energy future, and we’ll be devoting special segments of our podcast to that topic over the coming months. Earlier this month — in what now seems almost like a different world — the European Commission unveiled its flagship European Climate Law. It’s intended as the legal framework to back up the European Green Deal, the plan to slash greenhouse gas emissions to net zero by 2050. Here are some of the voices we gathered to talk about the Climate Law, who give a flavor of the battles to come. KADRI SIMSON, EUROPEAN COMMISSIONER FOR ENERGY
“The Green Deal is not just about energy policies, but also industrial policies. We have to closely cooperate with
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DAN JØRGENSEN, DENMARK’S CLIMATE MINISTER
“The target for climate-neutrality by 2050 needs not only to be a target for the EU as a whole but also for all individual countries. Because if we don’t, we will have a long and not very fruitful discussion about burdensharing. Also, imagine the situation when you have to say to one country that you need to be carbon-negative in order for other countries to keep polluting.” SVENJA SCHULZE, GERMANY’S ENVIRONMENT MINISTER
“We want to be carbon-neutral in 2050, and therefore we have to do more [by 2030] than what we agreed together. Minus 40 percent is not
enough, we need minus 50, 55 to reach the target.” GRETA THUNBERG, CLIMATE ACTIVIST
“When your house is on fire, you don’t wait a few more years to start putting it out. And yet, this is what the Commission are proposing today. When the EU presents this climate law and net zero by 2050 you indirectly admit surrender, that you are giving up.” MARKUS BEYRER, DIRECTOR GENERAL OF BUSINESSEUROPE
“We have proposed a number of prerequisites, which need to be addressed in order to make it a success for business and especially for the climate. But we are on board in order to make this a success. I think we have the ingredients in Europe, but what we need to focus on now is how we’re doing this.”
New episode online every Thursday EU Confidential is on Soundcloud, Apple, Google, Stitcher and Spotify (scan the code at right).
DECLASSIFIED Coronavirus myth buster
our industry sectors. But it is as much about housing, transport and other solutions that will help us capture the emissions.”
BY PAUL DALLISON
his own stamp of action, takes responsibility for it, makes it his own.” Liam Gallagher thought he had coronavirus but it turns out he just had the heating too high in his house! He made the confession when a fan asked him on Twitter: “Liam what’s ur thoughts on coronavirus?” The exOasis singer replied: “It’s very confusing and scary ... I feel like I’ve had it 7 times the last few days then realised the house is just hot.”
Caption competition
Disclaimer: Obviously there’s nothing funny about coronavirus, which is claiming lives across Europe, and that makes writing a satirical column rather tricky. At the same time, we need to keep our sense of humor in these difficult times, so let’s try to do that. Picking out truth from fact can be hard enough at the best of times, but even more so now that most of Europe is at home trying to juggle work with childcare. That’s led to a huge amount of false information about coronavirus being spread online. Here’s the Declassified guide to things that categorically do not stop you getting coronavirus. (Important note: I’m not a doctor but I do own records by Dr. John, Dr. Dre and Dr. Hook, which is effectively the same as seven years at medical school.) Cocaine Bad news for U.K. Cabinet minister Michael Gove,
Shell welcomes the European Green Deal and supports the EU’s target to achieve climate neutrality by 2050. Industry needs clear goals and predictable policies to provide the business case for investment. Achieving climate neutrality by 2050 will require unprecedented cooperation, and a framework to drive demand for and accelerate investment in new low carbon solutions.
Bono
“What’s for dinner? Same as yesterday, toilet paper and hand sanitizer.” CAN YOU DO BETTER? EMAIL PDALLISON@POLITICO.EU | BEST ENTRIES APPEAR IN FRIDAY’S ONLINE VERSION OF THIS COLUMN
but Colombian marching powder does not stop you getting the virus. That didn’t stop such claims being made online, forcing the French health ministry to post a message on Twitter making it clear the claims were not only wrong but also dangerous: “No, Cocaine does NOT
protect against Covid-19. It is an addictive drug causing serious adverse effects and harmful to the health of people.”
drinking. Of course if you drink enough bleach, it will kill coronavirus — and also you.
out does not boost your immune system. Hands up if you’ve tried it during lockdown! On second thought ...
Masturbation Bleach The Blue Ridge Poison Center in Virginia had to warn the public that bleach is for cleaning, not
Stupidity Bad news for our old friend, ex-Paris mayoral candidate Benjamin Griveaux, but doctors say that knocking one
Charles de Gaulle said that “faced with crisis, the man of character falls back on himself. He imposes
As if we haven’t suffered enough, the U2 frontman, with crushing inevitability, has written a song to, er, help. Called “Let Your Love Be Known,” it contains the line “I walked through the streets of Dublin, and no one was near.” Who wants to tell him that’s that got nothing to do with coronavirus? We should be thankful that Jean-Claude Juncker, for whom kissing, hairruffling and touching were part of the daily routine (whether asked for or not), isn’t in office for all this. Paul Dallison is POLITICO’s slot news editor.
There has never been a more relevant time to read POLITICO Telescope: The New AIDS Epidemic. In fact, we can’t help but see parallels between the coronavirus and the modern HIV epidemic — at least when it comes to young people.
“
The coronavirus is dangerous and highly contagious, but if you’re young, it’s likely you won’t suffer many symptoms. So while young people are being urged to take precautions for the sake of their loved ones (and society more generally), not all of them are behaving very responsibly. Sound familiar? The same dynamic is playing out when it comes to HIV, thanks to medical advances like antiretrovirals.” Sarah Wheaton, POLITICO health care reporter
We’re diving deep into the modern face of a disease that has transformed the world and changed the most intimate aspects of our lives.
Join the conversation and sign up today: politico.eu/telescope
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News
March 19, 2020 Page 4
BRUSSELS BEAT MOBILIT Y
BRUSSELS AIRLINES CANCELS ALL FLIGHTS UNTIL APRIL 19 Belgian carrier Brussels Airlines announced Tuesday it will not fly any planes from Saturday, March 21 to Sunday, April 19 due to the coronavirus outbreak. “Rest assured that we are already putting all our efforts into restarting operations on 20 April 2020 to serve you again with the extra smile you are used to,” the airline said in a statement. The demand for air travel has dramatically reduced across the globe as countries impose travel restrictions and governments recommend staying at home. The Belgian government on Saturday advised citizens against traveling abroad. Brussels Airlines’ parent company, the Lufthansa group, said it will cut 90 percent of its capacity to deal with the crisis. It said it will seek state aid from national governments to stay afloat. Globally, airlines could lose up to $113 billion due to the coronavirus pandemic, according to airline lobby IATA. (Saim Saeed)
VON DER LEYEN HOPES FOR VACCINE BY ‘AUTUMN,’ DEFYING EXPERT PREDICTIONS On Tuesday, Thorsten Schüller, a CureVac spokesman, told POLITICO that going through all three phases of the clinical trials process normally takes “years,” but he declined to respond to von der Leyen’s predicted timeline. Given the clamor for a coronavirus vaccine, he added: “We assume that the process will be shortened. This depends on the authorities.” CureVac is at the center of a German-U.S. dispute, with Berlin accusing U.S. President Donald Trump of trying to poach the company and have its vaccines produced exclusively for the U.S. American officials have rejected reports about Trump’s grab for vaccine exclusivity as “wildly overplayed.” The company echoed that denial on Tuesday. Likewise, the European Medicines Agency is ready to evaluate vaccines “within the shortest possible timelines,” the EU drug regulator’s deputy executive director, Noël Wathion, told health ministers on March 6. Early trials won’t start before April or May, Wathion said. Phase 1 trials study whether the vaccine is safe and has any impact in a small number of people. Subsequent phases of trials would study the shot in more people to see whether it really works; what the right dosage is; and what longer-term effects it has. Potential coronavirus vaccines won’t be ready for large-scale clinical studies until “several months from now,” Wathion said.
Public health officials say it will take a year or more
BY SARAH WHEATON
European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said the regulatory process for vaccines could be sped up as she defended a suggestion that a shot against the coronavirus could be on the market “before autumn.” That timeline is much faster than what’s foreseen by public health authorities, which expect another year to 18 months for an immunization to be available to the general public. Von der Leyen earlier on Tuesday expressed optimism following talks with CureVac, a biotech company working on a coronavirus vaccine. The EU has offered the company €80 million in financial backing. “I hope that with this support, we can have a vaccine on the market, perhaps before autumn,” she said. Vaccines, like all medicines, need to undergo a series of clinical trials before authorities decide if they can be sold. Von der Leyen, a trained medical doctor, expressed confidence that in this case the normal procedures could be fast-tracked. “As we are in a severe crisis, we all see that we are able to speed up any
European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen. ARIS OIKONOMOU/ AFP VIA GETTY IMAGES
of the processes that are slow normally and take a lot of time and are very bureaucratic,” she told a later press conference. Even though officials in both the U.S. and Europe have pledged to move as quickly as possible, they’ve consistently cautioned that a vaccine won’t be ready to jab in people’s arms in 2020. Von der Leyen said her aspirations came from CureVac itself. “They are highly specialized in this field, and it’s their prediction that they might be able, towards fall, to have the possibility to have a vaccine that is fighting coronavirus,” she said. In an interview with German media site Sport1 published Monday, CureVac majority investor Dietmar Hopp said timing depends on the German national regulator. However, he added, the shot “ought to be available in autumn” in case the virus comes back after the summer.
Agenda
Former journalist: Simon Taylor is now a senior adviser at Rud Pedersen Public Affairs.
Monday, March 23: Foreign Affairs Council, Brussels.
CERRE: Claire-Marie Healy joins the Centre on Regulation in Europe think tank as project manager for digital and mobility.
Tuesday, March 24: General Affairs Council, Brussels. Thursday, March 26: EU-G5 Sahel Summit 2020, Brussels.
And the award goes to ... Jeremy Galbraith, managing partner at BOLDT, has been named the 2020 Entrepreneur of the Year for Public Relations in Western Europe by European CEO Magazine. Also at BOLDT, Dominique Morel will be joining as a partner in Zurich as of June.
Tuesday, April 21: General Affairs Council, Brussels.
Career track Twitter hire: Monique Meche is the new global head of public policy at Twitter.
New gig: David Storer joins the European Association of Automotive Suppliers (CLEPA) as the director of research, innovation and new mobility.
Digital supervision: Cecilia BonefeldDahl, DigitalEurope’s director general, has joined EIT Digital’s supervisory board.
Corrections
Public affairs: Chris Dobson, former president of Speyside, is now executive partner at public affairs and reputation consultancy Kesarev.
POLITICO is committed to correcting errors. To contact the newsroom regarding a correction request, please email editorial@politico.eu.
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Page 5 March 19, 2020
CORONAVIRUS CRISIS HASTENS REMOTE-CONTROL EUROPE BY JACOPO BARIGAZZI, MAÏA DE LA BAUME AND DAVID M. HERSZENHORN
The business of EU government is being transformed by the coronavirus crisis. The need for speedy decisions and remote working are forcing the EU to modernize its antiquated decision-making processes, and officials predict this moment may one day be seen as a breakthrough in how Brussels makes its most important decisions. EU ambassadors on Wednesday are expected to adopt temporary
Outbreak forces officials and MEPs to innovate on virtual meetings and decisionmaking
new rules for Council of the European Union meetings where diplomats or ministers can’t attend in person because of quarantine or social-distancing measures to fight the pandemic. And several members of the European Parliament are pushing leaders to create the capability for a virtual plenary, using electronic “tokens” to verify the identities of MEPs during votes and other software for electronically signing amendments. All governments face logistical obstacles in a pandemic but the challenges are especially acute in Brussels, where key actors in the co-legislative bodies — the Council and the Parliament — must travel from out of town
to attend meetings and cast votes. The question of being physically present is especially sensitive for the Parliament, given the longstanding feud not just over the requirement of MEPs to vote in person, but for the entire body to travel to Strasbourg to hold its monthly plenary sessions. How to keep the EU functioning and able to take decisions without officials being in the same room has taken on new urgency as national leaders decided Tuesday to replace their regular March summit next week with a videoconference. While the Council has ways to take decisions remotely, by so-called written procedure, the process can be
cumbersome and time-consuming. Leaders needed several days last fall, for example, to extend the U.K.’s Brexit deadline to January 31 from October 31 without forcing all heads of state and government to travel to Brussels for a summit. But the problem is not just a matter of summits at the highest level of heads of state and government. Under current rules, a minimum number of EU officials and national ministers are also required to be physically present simply to hold meetings of the Council’s various other formations, which deal with policy issues SEE CRISIS ON PAGE 15
CHINA IS WINNING THE CORONAVIRUS PROPAGANDA WAR
Beijing deploys soft power as Europe and US fall short on solidarity BY MATTHEW KARNITSCHNIG IN BERLIN
Judging by the propaganda, this really is war — and China is winning. As Europe struggles to slow the spread of coronavirus and China begins to show signs that it has put the worst of the outbreak behind it, Beijing is engaging in a not-so-subtle PR campaign. China’s main strategy is to show that the country that gave birth to the virus (and then covered it up for weeks, allowing it to spread across the globe unhindered) is on the front lines trying to save humanity, while the EU can’t get its act together and the world’s other superpower is busy pointing fingers.
Over the past few days, China has sent planeloads of masks, teams of doctors and even ventilators around the world to help battle the crisis. Chinese billionaire Jack Ma donated 1 million masks and hundreds of thousands of testing kits to the U.S., with the first load arriving in Seattle on Monday. “We are doing instead of talking. We are the friends not enemy. Could the American do the same to Chinese?” China’s ambassador to South Africa, Lin Songtian, tweeted on Monday. A shipment of 300,000 masks, sent by Chinese charities founded by Ma and his Alibaba empire, arrived in Belgium this week. Chinese state news agency Xinhua published a photograph of one of the containers draped with the slogan “Unity makes strength” in French, Flemish and Chinese. Though the saying serves as the national motto of both Haiti and Bulgaria, it would appear the Chinese were taking a swipe at a lack of solidarity
China gave birth to the virus — but is trying to claw back goodwill across the world. HECTOR RETAMAL/ AFP VIA GETTY IMAGES
on display in Europe in recent weeks. Italy, by far the hardest-hit country in Europe so far, has struggled to get supplies and assistance from its EU partners, for example. Maurizio Massari, Italy’s ambassador to the EU, expressed frustration last week over member countries’ failure to heed a European Commission call to send equipment and supplies. “Unfortunately, not a single EU country responded to the Commission’s call,” he wrote in an op-ed for POLITICO last week. “Only China responded bilaterally. Certainly, this is not a good sign of European solidarity.” Italian Foreign Minister Luigi Di Maio rammed home the point by posting a video on Facebook that showed live coverage of a Chinese plane loaded with medical equipment and doctors arriving to help fight the coronavirus. China’s willingness to help has won Beijing praise from the highest levels. SEE PROPAGANDA ON PAGE 15
News
March 19, 2020 Page 6
TRUMP’S TRADE WAR PROVES IMMUNE TO CRISIS U.S. President Donald Trump is unwilling to end his trade war — even in a time of global upheaval. DREW ANGERER/ GETTY IMAGES
Europe’s diplomatic efforts to broker a truce fall flat as Washington looks to shake up the new trade order BY JAKOB HANKE VELA
Despite the coronavirus pandemic, unprecedented lockdowns and fears of a global economic meltdown, U.S. President Donald Trump is still waging his tariff-hiking trade war. Just one day after G7 leaders — including Trump — said they remained “committed to the stability of the global economy” and pledged to “coordinate measures and do whatever it takes” to safeguard economic growth, Washington confirmed it was pressing ahead with tariff hikes on European aircraft to 15 percent, up from 10 percent, starting Wednesday. Airlines have been some of the first and hardest-hit casualties of the crisis, and their crack-up is sending shockwaves through their suppliers. America’s Boeing has called for a $60 billion bailout of the aerospace sector. European leaders such as Commission President Ursula von der Leyen and her trade chief Phil Hogan had hoped that they would be able to steer Trump away from the trade war with a mini-deal in sectors such as technology, energy and food regulation. But that diplomacy fell flat, as Washington plowed on with efforts to shake up the dynamics of global trade, partly in the hope that its tactics will bring manufacturing
jobs back to the U.S. The United States carried through with its tariff hike on Wednesday. According to the U.S. Federal Register, the tariff hike took effect “with respect to products that are entered for consumption ... on or after 12:01 a.m. eastern standard time on March 18, 2020.” The Commission replied on Wednesday that its “strong view is that the focus of both sides should be on finding a negotiated solution to the aircraft disputes.” “Hogan made this point strongly to Ambassador [Robert] Lighthizer when they spoke on March 16,” a spokesperson said, adding that the “Commission negotiating team will follow up actively with their U.S. counterparts in the coming days” to secure a truce. The tariffs are unlikely to have any additional effect on Airbus in the short term, given that U.S. airlines have already delayed orders over the coronavirus travel bans. A spokesperson for French Economy Minister Bruno Le Maire said Paris regretted the U.S. decision to hike tariffs. “We must do quite the opposite and coordinate our responses and support our economies.” Still, the tariff hike is yet another sign that Trump is not willing to put an end to his trade war, despite the enormous strain on the global economy and warnings from industry that government measures to contain the pandemic, such as travel bans, are already impacting global trade. International organizations such as the OECD have warned of a global recession, and urged governments to cooperate to cushion the impact and calm markets.
ESCALATING CRISIS
Trump’s decision to stick to his guns came as a blow to those who had hoped that the current crisis would cause a trade truce, if not an end to the war. EU officials reacted with disbelief. “Faced with a global pandemic and global recession ... one would think that any rational [person] would seek to stabilize trade and reassure markets,” said one senior EU official. Christophe Hansen, a lawmaker in the European Parliament and trade coordinator for the European People’s Party, warned that “fanning the flames of the trade war,” was an “irresponsible and a dangerous distraction from the fight that really matters today.” While international cooperation was the “key” to a global recovery, Hansen warned that “this decision will only further undermine our already tense trade relations.” NO TARIFF RELIEF
The move was also a blow to many U.S. lawmakers who had also hoped for some trade respite. Stephanie Murphy, a Florida Democrat, last month asked U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer to lower tariffs on the EU and China to calm markets. “There is one lever currently entirely in the administration’s [power] to provide a significant tax break to both businesses and consumers in America, and that’s initiating a détente in the trade wars that were started with the Section 232 and Section 301 tariffs,” Murphy said after a House Ways and Means Committee meeting with Lighthizer. Other U.S. lawmakers endorsed her proposal.
But White House trade adviser Peter Navarro last week slammed the idea, telling POLITICO “there are no discussions within the White House” about whether to suspend some tariffs, even temporarily. “That is simply a fake news gambit by the usual Wall Street suspects who never met an American job they didn’t want to offshore for the sake of a buck,” Navarro said in an interview. DECOUPLING
Instead, the White House appears set on using the coronavirus pandemic as an opportunity to accelerate the so-called decoupling from China. Navarro — the foremost hawk in an administration of trade hawks — said Sunday that President Trump will sign an executive order this week that would help bring pharmaceutical and medical supply chains back to the U.S., in part by placing new “Buy American” requirements on certain government agencies. White House economic adviser Larry Kudlow added Monday that the Trump administration is considering cutting taxes for companies that relocate their supply chains to the U.S., despite warnings that the measures would risk the supply of medicine and medical supplies at a time when they are needed most. Tony Fratto, a White House and Treasury Department official under the George W. Bush administration, called the move “a mistake.” “Pandemics are global,” he wrote on Twitter. “We need greater cooperation, not keeping critical supplies in walled gardens.” Doug Palmer, Megan Cassella and Sabrina Rodríguez contributed reporting.
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March 19, 2020 Page 8
AS ITALY ASKS FOR CORONAVIRUS HELP, ITS POPULISTS WAIT FOR THE ANSWER The worst-case scenario for the Italian establishment would be a bailout with strict conditions
BY JACOPO BARIGAZZI
The biggest question facing the European Union when it comes to responding to the coronavirus crisis is: Who’s going to pay for it? EU finance ministers tried to present a united front Monday, after a week in which the public health response to the epidemic starkly illuminated the bloc’s divisions. They excluded radical alterations to the eurozone’s fiscal rules — at least for now — but pledged to be as flexible as possible as countries bust their budgets trying to counter the coming downturn. “We are not taking any possible solution off the table,” Eurogroup President Mário Centeno told reporters. Left unanswered is was what will be done if flexibility proves not to be enough — and most crucially if it falls short in Italy, the European country worst hit by the crisis, where politicians across the spectrum have been calling for more to be done and populists are waiting in the wings, ready to fan any sense of grievance into electoral advantage. For the moment, with all EU countries on emergency footing, the financial solidarity seems to be holding. Commission officials have predicted that the EU is likely to go into recession after 23 quarters of continuous growth. Deficit spending is expected to rise across the bloc, with Italy and possibly also France exceeding the 3 percent of GDP limit under the eurozone’s Stability and Growth Pact. But even fiscal hawks like the Dutch and Finnish governments, who could normally be expected to sound the alarm, have been careful not to add fuel to the fire. “I haven’t seem the same tone [as during] the Greek crisis, also because there’s no moral hazard this time,” said an EU diplomat. VIRUS FEARS
With 2,500 dead and 26,000 positive cases, Italy is the world’s second most afflicted country after China. It entered the crisis with a monumental debt burden of about 135 percent of GDP, leaving it less room than others in the eurozone to spend its way out of trouble. Rome’s limited means are already on display as it struggles to keep its economy afloat with most businesses shut and its citizens in lockdown. Spain has unveiled a package intended to pump €200 billion into its economy. Germany has announced it will spend at least €550 billion to shore up its companies, offering them “unlimited” credit to keep their businesses afloat. And in the U.K. — which is outside the eurozone and the EU — the government has said it will put together a £330 billion rescue package of loan guarantees. Rome, meanwhile, has unveiled a €25 billion package, among other measures, with officials saying a second tranche of roughly the same size could soon be announced. When Treasury Minister Roberto
A security guard stands watch in a deserted terminal at Rome’s Fiumicino International Airport on Tuesday. ANDREAS SOLARO/ AFP VIA GETTY IMAGES
Gualtieri said last week said that “nobody will lose their job” because of the virus, an Italian official described it as one of the “defining moments” of the crisis, because it’s unlikely to be a promise that Rome can keep without assistance. Calls in the country for new EUwide measures have begun to ring out, as they did at the start of the 2009 financial crisis. Romano Prodi, an ex-prime minister and former president of the European Commission, has joined his voice to proposals by many Italian economists for the introduction of so-called eurobonds — bonds guaranteed by the 19 eurozone countries acting as a single bloc. While these would allow countries like Italy to borrow more cheaply, the measure has so far been resisted by Germany and the Nordic countries who say it would amount to having their taxpayers make debt payments for loans that other countries have taken. “It’s possible coronavirus will change that, especially if the economic downturn is severe,” said a senior EU diplomat. During a video meeting of EU leaders Tuesday, Italian Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte proposed the introduction of “coronavirus bonds,” a form of eurobonds, and for the first time the proposal was not openly rejected by the other leaders. “We are looking also into that, but first we have to use all the flexibility that current rules allow,” said the senior EU diplomat. WORST CASE
The worst-case scenario for the Italian establishment would be if Europe rides to Italy’s rescue, but only in the form of a formal bailout with strict conditions. “Winding through some European circles is the idea that Italy will end up cornered and be forced to accept what it has always refused: a rescue by the International Monetary Fund
or the European institutions,” Federico Fubini, a columnist for the centrist Corriere della Sera newspaper, wrote Tuesday. Such a move would likely empower Italy’s Euroskeptic populists, who have in recent years become the country’s most popular political force. There’s a widespread perception among the Italian public that the country has been left by the rest of the EU to fend for itself — first during the financial crisis, from which it has yet to recover, and then during the migration crisis, when Italy’s calls for an EU-wide system of burden-sharing fell on deaf ears. The resulting growth in Euroskepticsm has resulted in a surge of support over the last five years for Matteo Salvini, leader of the farright League, and Giorgia Meloni, who heads the post-fascist Brothers of Italy. Together, their two parties command 42 percent of support in the polls, likely enough to be able to form a government if an election were held today. A mishandling by the EU of the coronavirus response could push that number even higher. “If the perception becomes that the EU has not done enough for the country, the opposition — especially the Euroskeptic opposition — could clearly gain from that,” said Lorenzo Pregliasco, a pollster and the author of “Fenomeno Salvini,” a book about the League leader. READY TO STRIKE
Salvini hasn’t missed a chance to attack the government over its handling of the coronavirus crisis, branding it as “incapable” and dismissing its €25 billion response as insufficient. And Salvini and Meloni have already positioned themselves to take advantage of any bailout — ramping up their demands on the EU as the crisis has heightened. Last month Salvini refused to rule out an exit from the EU, saying that either Europe must change “or it has
no reason to exist.” The most likely tool for that type of EU assistance is the European Stability Mechanism (ESM), which supplies governments with rescue loans provided they agree to strict conditions on how they will manage their economies during the time it takes to pay them back. The ESM is politically toxic in Italy, because of its involvement in the Greek crisis, when the bailout was attached to demands for strict austerity measures by the so-called Troika: the European Central Bank, the Commission and the IMF. Both Salvini and Meloni have opposed any use of the ESM, warning it would come with too tight a straitjacket. For Rome, a Troika always remains a risk,” said Marco Zanni, a League MEP who chairs the far-right Identity and Democracy Group in the European Parliament. Any money coming from the ESM should be treated as “a development fund,” Antonio Tajani, the former president of the European Parliament, whose Forza Italia party is allied with the populists, wrote on Twitter. The money should come “without [the] Troika and without limitations on national sovereignty.” Polls show that more than 60 percent of Italians support what the government is doing, but many in Rome worry that number could crumble as the economic impact starts to bite. Another turning point could come when the crisis has passed its peak, if Brussels presents a bill for its help in the form of strict demands for cuts to the Italian deficit and debt or Greekstyle austerity cuts. If that happens, the populists will be ready to strike. “Conditionality is politically unacceptable” said Zanni. He emphasized that Italy is a net payer to the EU budget and that it “is unacceptable if they say ‘You’re in need — ask for the help of the European Stability Mechanism.’”
News
Page 9 March 19, 2020
INTERNET FACES BIG TEST AS WORLD WORKS FROM HOME Online activity has spiked across Europe as governments put their citizens on lockdowns BY MARK SCOTT, LAURENS CERULUS AND JANOSCH DELCKER
As soon as Konrad Iturbe started working from home, he ran into problems. Sitting in his shared apartment in a northern suburb of Barcelona, the 20-year-old app developer saw his internet speeds fall off a cliff soon after the country entered a two-week shutdown on Saturday because of the coronavirus pandemic. “It keeps dropping calls, it’s hard to upload and download files,” said Iturbe, who now relies on his unlimited mobile data plan to keep in touch with colleagues also working remotely. “I’m doing what I can to keep off the internet as much as possible. I don’t need to use Netflix because I already have a server full of movies.” As more governments order people to work from home to limit the spread of the virus, questions are starting to be asked about how the internet — everything from people’s mobile networks to high-speed fiber networks — will be able to cope
with more and more people logging in from their living rooms. So far, the answer is: mostly OK, despite a more than 50 percent increase in global internet traffic, according to figures from Akamai, a firm that tracks web activity. Carriers have doled out free data to customers to keep them online. Others have urged people to switch to fixed broadband networks and cut back on playing bandwidth-heavy video games. Europe, the United States and most developed countries have internet infrastructure that is built to withstand these surges of activity, according to industry executives and analysts, despite O2, the British carrier, suffering major disruptions that the company said was not related to the coronavirus outbreak. So far, most outages have been limited to digital services like videoconferencing apps that are drowning in new customers eager to check in with colleagues or customers. “We haven’t seen an overburden of networks linked to increased teleworking,” Cédric O, France’s junior digital minister, said on Twitter. “They are, at this stage, correctly sized.” These upbeat messages — and reassurances from telecoms carriers and tech companies alike — do not mean the world is out of the woods yet. SEE INTERNET ON PAGE 14
In the coronavirus era, a lot of white-collar work has shifted from the office to the home. JOHN MACDOUGALL/AFP VIA GETTY IMAGES
WORKING FROM HOME? YOUR BOSS IS WATCHING Apps that enable whitecollar work during the pandemic include some creepy features BY VINCENT MANANCOURT
The coronavirus outbreak has shifted work away from the office, but not from prying eyes. As companies across Europe and the United States order employees to work from home, the focus of the working day has shifted to messaging applications and conference call platforms. But any sense that employees are flying under the radar is misplaced. Working from home may in fact increase workplace surveillance, as in-person conversations move to videoconferencing apps that tell your boss whether you’re paying attention, or messaging apps that your boss can access. Take Zoom: Use of the videoconferencing app has boomed as offices have closed. But what you may not know is that it has an “attendee attention tracking” feature that allows hosts to track if attendees click away from the app. “Hosts can see an indicator in the participant panel of a meeting or webinar if an attendee does not have
Zoom Desktop Client or Mobile App in focus for more than 30 seconds. ‘In focus’ means the user has the Zoom meeting view is open and active [sic],” reads a section of its help page. As knowledge of the feature has percolated, users have taken to Twitter to voice concern. Mia Hamano, whose Twitter bio lists her as a product manager at brand consultancy Buffer, said Zoom’s attention-tracking metric is “a bit extreme.” “Often times I have other documents that I’m looking at in Zoom meetings … so I’m not necessarily going to be staring at a person’s face for the entirety of the call,” she wrote. Another popular conferencing app, UberConference, boasts on its features page that it provides users with a detailed transcript of their calls including who said what — and sends it straight to a note-taking app. “UberConference will show you a quick conference summary after every call, as well as automatically email you a detailed report with a Voice Intelligence summary, transcript, call recordings, participant information and statistics, as well as a time log,” it says on its features page — a far cry from a sleepy morning meeting. The app also gives users a breakdown of employees’ calling habits, from the number of calls they have SEE SPYING ON PAGE 14
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March 19, 2020 Page 10
DECARBONIZING CITIES TO MEET EU GOALS IS A QUESTION OF MONEY WORKING GROUP
Urban areas are huge CO2 emitters, and that won’t change without investing a lot of cash BY JAN CIENSKI IN WARSAW
Cities generate about 70 percent of the world’s greenhouse gases, so any effort to become carbon-neutral fails without their involvement. But the costs of going green are immense. Think of the EU’s Green Deal program to become climate-neutral by 2050 as a pyramid. Up on top, the bloc’s leaders have made the midcentury target the core of the new European Commission’s program. That aim has to be approved by national governments (something that’s being worked on). Then those goals get transmitted further down the chain to end up at municipal governments. The transmission belt that begins with Commission President Ursula von der Leyen ends with local officials like Justyna Glusman, Warsaw’s coordinator for sustainable development and greenery, who has to figure out how to revamp her city with very limited financial resources. “Cities face all kinds of challenges. They are seen as opportunities but they are also seen as those who have to take the responsibility for driving climate neutrality,” said Katarzyna Szumielewicz, program manager at the Commission’s Directorate General for Regional and Urban Policy, speaking at a recent POLITICO working group on how cities can reduce their carbon footprint. Globally, cities need to invest $1.8 trillion a year to become carbonneutral, according to a report by the Coalition for Urban Transitions, an NGO. It calculates that the investment would generate annual returns worth $2.8 trillion in 2030, and $7 trillion in 2050 based on cost savings alone.
Globally cities need to invest $1.8 trillion a year to become carbon neutral. PHILIPPE DESMAZES/AFP VIA GETTY IMAGES
A LOCAL PROBLEM
Those big numbers gain granular meaning at the level of individual cities. The EU wants new buildings to reach nearly zero energy performance by the beginning of 2021 and to decarbonize all of Europe’s buildings by 2050. The Polish capital, a city of 1.7 million in a greater metropolitan region of about 3 million, faces a huge job in reaching the bloc’s green goals. It has the Continent’s largest centralized urban heating network, but it is coal-fired so will have to be changed in order to conform to carbon neutrality. About a fifth of the city’s houses have their own heating systems, many of them antiquated coal-fired furnaces that create smog and emit carbon dioxide — but many of those house owners don’t have the money to upgrade to cleaner gas, let alone to zero-emission systems like photovoltaics or heat pumps. “Most of the buildings in Poland are single-family buildings and people have no money to invest,” Alicja Kuczera, CEO of the Polish Green
PRESENTED BY
Building Council, said at the working group. Warsaw isn’t as old as many other European cities because it was flattened during World War II. But it was largely rebuilt in the decades following that conflict when the main push was to house people, and modern energy-efficiency standards were unknown. That means existing buildings need to be insulated and modernized. The city has about 300,000 buildings. “If we want to retrofit just a part of them it is a huge cost,” said Glusman. She estimated that upgrading a fifth of the city’s residential building stock would cost €700 million; the city’s three-year budget for such tasks is €70 million. “We know it is not enough,” she said. Warsaw’s issues are faced by cities across the Continent. About twothirds of Europe’s building stock dates to before 1980, which means it doesn’t meet modern energy standards and has to be upgraded. It’s not just buildings. In order to become carbon-neutral, everything from waste systems to water and transport also has to be rethought. Although Warsaw is Poland’s wealthiest city, it lags Western Europe in many of these areas. The Polish capital has only 43 charge points for electric cars while Berlin has 573 and Paris has 815 — and both the French and German governments have made pledges to dramatically speed up their deployment. That is setting off a race for cash. National governments are fighting among themselves to get as large a slice as possible from the EU’s next
seven-year budget. Below them, regional governments and city administrations are also calling for more money. “Cities are the largest emitters so if the EU wants to address the issue it needs to address cities directly and not through national governments,” Glusman said. MONEY WORRIES
In Poland, local governments face severe funding challenges. The country’s laws set debt limits for cities, making it difficult for them to borrow large sums needed for expensive carbon-reduction projects. While Warsaw is large and relatively rich, smaller cities and towns face difficulty in approaching debt markets because their projects are too small, said Piotr Dmuchowski, head of regional institutional sales for HSBC. “If a mayor of a smaller town wants to buy 10 electric buses, that’s too small as the eurobond minimum is €500 million,” he said. He advocates for the government to make it easier for Polish cities to band together to jointly finance such projects, something that’s already happening in Scandinavia, the Netherlands and France, among other EU countries. Polish municipal budgets also face a political problem. The country’s ruling nationalist Law and Justice party is at odds with many municipal governments, which are in the hands of liberal opposition parties. Sweeping reforms to the education system and to social benefits have put extra strains on local budgets that have to bear those costs. Glusman said that those policy
changes have cost Warsaw about 1 billion złoty (€230 million). Calling on Brussels to send cash to cities, she said: “The policy of the EU will be crucial to the success of these programs,” she said. The EU’s Green Deal calls for €1 trillion in investments — money that is to come from the bloc’s budget, the European Investment Bank, governments, private lenders and investors. “For Europe to transition to a climate-neutral economy, we need both political commitment and massive investments,” Valdis Dombrovskis, the Commission vice president in charge of the budget, said earlier this year. In a sign of that new effort, the EIB in January struck a €1 billion financing deal with the city of Vienna, largely related to energy-efficiency measures in municipal housing. It was the bank’s first such agreement with a large European city. “Over the next 10 years, we plan to kickstart climate action projects worth €1 trillion,” Andrew McDowell, the EIB’s vice president responsible for energy policy, said in January. That spigot of cash is going to have to be directed across the Continent for cities to really reduce their carbon footprint. “In the end it’s all about the money. Without the money it will be extremely difficult,” said Piotr Czopek, director of renewable and distributed energy at Poland’s ministry of state assets. This article is produced with full editorial independence by POLITICO reporters and editors. Learn more about editorial content presented by outside advertisers at www.politico. eu/frequently-asked-questions
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Fast forward to carbon-neutral cities 2050 vision: How circular construction and low-carbon materials will transform buildings and infrastructure BY MARCEL COBUZ, HEAD OF REGION EUROPE, LAFARGEHOLCIM Let’s fast-forward to 2050. Marc and Luisa are strolling around the streets in their new neighborhood. Like a large proportion of Europeans, they live in one of the Continent’s major cities. They felt motivated to move to this big city to enjoy the quality of life that such modern urban environments offer. Issues such as air pollution, poorly isolated buildings and carbon-intensive electricity sources are a memory from past decades. The European Union’s Green Deal had been decisive in driving cities to fully integrate the principles of circularity and carbon-neutrality across the economy, including buildings and infrastructure. It led to the mainstreaming of innovative building materials — mainly concrete based and highly recyclable. In fact, cities have even turned into permanent carbon sinks through the widespread use of materials such as concrete that permanently absorbs CO2. Enabling building norms based on carbon lifecycle performance Marc and Luisa stop in front of the city’s landmark tower. Built 20 years earlier, in 2030, it is still state-of-the-art in terms of climate performance. It uses resilient and high-performance materials, such as insulating mineral foam which enable it to maintain its energy consumption close to zero. The materials were chosen based on their lifecycle carbon performance (accounting for manufacturing, the use phase and its end of life). Aligned with the EU Green Deal, construction norms and standards were reviewed to make climate and environmental performance the focal point in new construction. It has driven the construction sector to integrate climate performance across its value chain and to competitively deliver climate-neutral buildings and infrastructures. The design of carbon pricing has also
driven a behavioral change of all actors in the construction value chain. By targeting manufacturing processes, carbon pricing has evolved a societywide mechanism based on carbon consumption. It means that the cost of carbon emissions has become visible in the final price of products. It created the incentive needed to choose low-carbon materials and led to carbon-neutral solutions not only becoming the norm, but also less expensive than alternatives. It created innovative competition on the market as it covered locally sourced and imported products. Enhancing circularity in construction materials Next to the landmark tower, Mark and Luisa notice a 100-year old office building. Thanks to the EU Green Deal’s initial “renovation wave”, the building, which had then the worst-performing “E” energy rating, was stripped to its bare concrete foundations, pillars and slabs, before going through a rebuilding phase that significantly improved its climate performance. In addition, if the building was to later become a school or a community center, its redesign would now allow for an easy remodeling. During the deconstruction phase, concrete rubble from the old building was carefully sorted and crushed to increase their carbon absorption, before being reused as aggregates in new building materials. Based on academic research — which shows that in a 50-year period, concrete reabsorbs a minimum of 15 percent of the carbon emitted during cement manufacturing — building design and concrete made from recycled aggregates were optimized to increase their carbon absorption. With this in mind, new design, materials and solutions have transformed cities and buildings into carbon sinks. This has also meant a new approach to demolition waste. Previously, incentives barely contributed to driving de-
Andreas Tower in Zurich, Switzerland | via LafargeHolcim, Rüdiger Nehmzow
“Decarbonizing construction in an accelerated way is mission possible and within our reach.”
molition waste away from landfill and toward recycling. The vast majority of rubble was sent to landfill — the main waste stream on the Continent. The EU Green Deal has been fundamental in turning the trend around by incentivizing an increased use of recycled material through standards, by enforcing regulations on landfilling bans and the recycling of demolition waste, and by boosting innovative public procurement in cities, for example, for the use carbon-neutral concrete in public infrastructure. Innovative solutions fit for climateneutral infrastructures Mark and Luisa continue their walk toward the park — a rehabilitated former quarry with waterfalls and diverse trees — passing the city’s main road. During its construction phase in the 2020s, when road transportation was at the beginning of its low-carbon transition, the city used data-based solutions to optimize the carbon footprint on its infrastructure projects. Thanks to digitalization and material and sourcing knowledge, designers were able to drive down carbon emissions of the road by 50 percent over its whole lifecycle, including its use phase. Optimized designs also drove down emissions from cars. The metro line that runs under the road was built in the same decade in record time. Innovative solutions have allowed reuse of in situ excavated materials to build underground infrastructure. Back to 2020
Parc Blandan, France | via LafargeHolcim
Decarbonizing construction in an accelerated way is mission possible and within our reach. It will re-
quire unprecedented collaboration: • Between industry and policymakers who will facilitate the development of the business case that is necessary to guarantee short- and long-term investment profitability for private companies and boost market demand for low-carbon and circular products and solutions via public procurement. • Across the construction sector to fully integrate sustainability performance across its value chain alongside existing criteria such as safety, cost and durability, in a way that respects the principles of material neutrality and lifecycle performance. With 2050 in mind, the EU Green Deal provides the opportunity to plan the following: • In the short-term, supporting investments in the decarbonization of European manufacturing by ensuring the predictability of carbon pricing mechanisms and creating a carbon level playing field with imports. • In the mid-term, drive the whole construction value chain towards an increased use of low-carbon materials by introducing building norms and standards that are based on lifecycle performance and material-neutrality (including through public procurement for public investments). • In the long-term, shifting the design of carbon pricing mechanisms from emissions to consumption, in order to create the virtuous circle that is needed to drive consumers towards an increased use of low-carbon products. We are on a mission to decarbonize cities. We can all make it happen.
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March 19, 2020 Page 12
HOW CORONAVIRUS HELPS PUTIN Pandemic is a convenient excuse to crack down on protests, but could bite later on
BY ALEC LUHN IN MOSCOW
Right: Russian President Vladimir Putin has cleared a path to retain his position until 2036. ALEXEY DRUZHININ/AFP VIA GETTY IMAGES
For Vladimir Putin, the coronavirus outbreak may have come at a convenient time. The global pandemic has allowed the Russian president to argue his rule must be secured until 2036 to avoid “upheaval,” while also conveniently ruling out any mass protests on safety grounds. “We can see how difficult the situation in the global policy, security and the global economy is,” he said in a speech in parliament, explaining why a “reset” of the presidential term limits that would allow him to run for a fifth term should be included in constitutional amendments. “We are also battling the coronavirus now, oil prices are fluctuating, together with the national currency exchange rate and stock exchanges.” To be sure, Putin didn’t need the coronavirus outbreak to push through his constitutional amendments. Although nearly half of Russians in January said they see the changes as nothing more than an attempt to keep him in power, a poll last week found 57 percent of Russians would still be willing to vote for him in 2024. Still, the epidemic has helped him to clear a path to return to the presidency in 2024 and 2030 with almost no dissent at all — and provided an excuse to crack down on demonstrations. Just hours after opposition groups announced a protest for March 22 in response to the constitutional amendments — which were passed in parliament last week — Moscow banned all public events of over 5,000 people as a precaution against the spread of coronavirus. The timing was suspicious given that Russia had yet to begin ringing the alarm bell or take wide-reaching measures to restrict travel and cancel school and events. Although activists initially called on Russians to ignore the ban, they were forced to postpone the demonstration as the number of coronavirus cases began to rapidly increase. The one-person pickets that began last week have also petered out in the face of health concerns. The fast-moving coronavirus story also continues to distract from the dubious legality of the constitutional changes. On Monday, more than 350 professors, lawyers and writers signed a letter arguing the term-limit reset was unconstitutional. Their call was quickly drowned in a deluge of coronavirus news as the number of reported cases jumped from 63 to 93 and the government closed the borders to foreigners. “People are less interested right now in the amendments and will increasingly be concerned about their health, how to live their lives in conditions of an epidemic,” said analyst
Masha Lipman. In February, a poll found that 30 percent of Russians were afraid of contracting coronavirus, and that number is almost certain to rise amid stricter measures from the government announced Monday. Already that evening, many supermarket shelves in Moscow were empty as residents bought long-term supplies of toilet paper, buckwheat and other dry goods. “For now it seems this terrible epidemic’s arrival in Russia couldn’t have come at a better time for the ruling regime,” opposition pundit Alexander Ryklin wrote. “Now they’ll blame it for the slump in the domestic market and the collapse of the ruble exchange rate and the fall in oil prices and all the related economic problems that are coming.” Some have even suggested that the problems with coronavirus and the oil price prompted members of Putin’s inner circle to persuade him to stay on as president, rather than taking a less-taxing job as head of the state council or another body. It has also allowed Putin to rally Russians behind him in the face of yet another external threat and warn against false information being spread “from abroad.” But as Ryklin and other analysts have pointed out, if economic troubles continue long-term, the coronavirus smokescreen could wear thin. Politically, coronavirus is a doubleedged sword. If it spreads through Russia, that could not only call into question the state response to the
crisis but also undermine Putin’s efforts to bring the economy out of stagnation. “The official figures are a bit more than 100 infected, but there are reasons to think the scope of this could be significant,” Lipman said. “That could affect public opinion and raise questions about the government’s ability to implement economic promises that are now fixed in the constitution.” The government planned to be more generous to citizens to keep up the good mood and the political acquiescence that is important for the authorities,” she added. Since Moscow walked away from oil production cuts with Saudi Arabia in early March, reportedly in an attempt to put U.S. shale producers out of business, the price of Brent crude has dropped from around $50 a barrel to $30. As oil is Russia’s main export, the ruble exchange rate slipped as well. With more than $100 billion in its sovereign wealth fund, Moscow has said it’s prepared to weather the storm and can still balance the budget at these prices. But the economic costs of the severe and long-lasting coronavirus restrictions were not originally part of these calculations. Last week, Russia’s former finance minister warned that the economy might not grow at all this year. That’s a problem for Putin, who couched the constitutional reform in promises of economic growth. The amendments include the indexation
of pensions and a guaranteed minimum income, and he has also ordered a massive program of social spending on health care, education and housing. As coronavirus takes its toll — Moscow is reportedly considering shutting down most businesses besides grocery stores and pharmacies — paying for all this will become more difficult. And this is happening right before a national vote on the constitutional changes. Although the vote has no legal bearing on the amendments, it was meant to be a final show of support for Putin’s continued rule. Instead, many have been expecting it to be postponed. How can the state ask citizens to line up at polling places when it’s telling them to stay home from work and school? Yet a delay would allow the fear factor of coronavirus to wear out and for the economic costs to begin building up, said analyst Yekaterina Schulmann. “Also there will be deaths, cases of neglect, conspiracy theories, a general distrust of the authorities, so I doubt [coronavirus will be a] net benefit,” she said. “There are immediate effects and then there are after-effects.” Even Putin seems unsure of how exactly to proceed. On Tuesday, he signed a decree setting April 22 as the date of the vote. At the same time, he said it could be moved back “if the situation demands it.” “There’s nothing more important than the life and health of our citizens,” he said.
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March 19, 2020 Page 14
Internet CONTINUED FROM PAGE 9
“I get a lot of work done because I don’t have to talk to my coworkers.” KONRAD ITURBE, APP DEVELOPER
With weeks if not months ahead when people will be working from home, telecoms infrastructure and mobile networks are likely to be tested. Digital services, including homeschooling apps now used to keep children up to speed during countrywide lockdowns, will be put under mounting strain. Regulators are expected to come under pressure to tweak existing net neutrality laws to prioritize certain internet traffic over others. “We will need to watch what traffic patterns are like to ensure a smooth experience for everyone,” said Matthew Howett, founder of Assembly, a telecoms regulatory consultancy firm in London. “Some people are experiencing problems with online services. But that’s a problem with those services, and not the network.” RESPONDING TO CORONAVIRUS
With people logging in from home, often for the first time, carriers are trying to calm people’s nerves — though often they are handing out mixed messages about how to respond to the ongoing crisis. In France, for instance, Orange, the former telecoms monopoly, gave away a month’s subscription to its paid-for television service for kids and extra data to its mobile customers. But in Spain, where the company has millions of users, it teamed up with Telefónica and other local operators to urge people to cut back on unnecessary internet traffic and to rely on traditional phones, not mobile phones, wherever possible. Others like Proximus in Belgium also gifted free data to their mobile
customers, while Vodafone, whose operations span Europe, allowed users to access medical information for free on their devices. In the U.S., where cities and entire states are rapidly shutting down bars, social events and some schools, Comcast, the broadband provider, opened its Wi-Fi networks to nonsubscribers, while AT&T said it would not charge customers who could not pay their bills because of the pandemic. The U.S. Federal Communications Commission also got more than 100 local broadband and mobile providers to pledge to keep Americans connected to the internet until at least late May. Lise Fuhr, head of ETNO, a trade group of European carriers, said that she has no evidence of significant disruptions caused by the global crisis. For companies that coordinate global internet traffic, so-called exchanges that sit at the center of the digital economy, many said they are expecting demand to only increase as home-working becomes the norm. At the Amsterdam Internet Exchange in the Netherlands, traffic had gone up by as much as 12 percent after the Dutch imposed fresh restrictions short of a lockdown, according to Bram Semeijn, a company spokesman, who denied they would not be able to manage the demand. “Even if traffic doubles due to the coronavirus impact, we’d still be able to handle it easily,” he said. In Frankfurt, home to another global exchange known as DE-CIX, workers last week reported a record data flow of over 9 terabits per second, which a spokesperson said was due to a spike in cold weather and the spread of the novel coronavirus. Most of this surge was linked to video streaming — both to watch videos on services like Netflix and to
conduct video calls on messenger services like Skype or WhatsApp. “Even if all companies in Europe had their employees work from home and the European Football Championship was to be broadcast at the same time, DE-CIX can still provide bandwidths necessary for smooth connections,” said a company spokesperson. In Italy, currently the European country most affected by the coronavirus, more people had shifted to using the country’s broadband network compared with local mobile connections as people stayed in their homes, according to Ian Fogg, an analyst at OpenSignal, a data analytics firm that tracks mobile connections worldwide. Yet his team is now also seeing a slowdown in those mobile data speeds because the country’s networks are either struggling to keep up, people are streaming more videos or mobile connections are patchy, at best, in people’s homes. “This is a moving situation,” said Fogg. “We’re starting to see changes in the behavior of consumers.” For Iturbe, the Spaniard now suffering from slow internet connectivity in Barcelona, the sluggish access — even when using his mobile data — had forced him to change his habits. Instead of chatting with co-workers over coffee, he now spends his days with headphones on, plugging away with his daily work. He had considered heading to his parents’ house just outside Madrid, but when the fast train he had booked was canceled, he figured it was best to stay put. “I get a lot of work done because I don’t have to talk to my co-workers,” Iturbe said. “I like staying at home. I’m an introvert.” Laura Kayali contributed reporting from Paris.
Spying CONTINUED FROM PAGE 9
made, to the average length of the call. While these creepy features don’t have to be used, the advice that some remote workers have been receiving suggests they will be. The Wall Street Journal instructed its staff to “respond within just a few minutes” to Slack or Google Hangout messages and to let managers know if they are taking a break, in meetings, conducting interviews or if they will “otherwise be unavailable for a while.” It’s not just video-conferencing apps that will facilitate bosses’ Orwellian tendencies. Slack, a messaging platform aimed at workplaces, also has some features that should give you pause. One, if you’re on a paid plan, is that it may allow your boss to read your direct messages. “Workspace Owners can apply to access Corporate Export, a self-serve export tool that permits a Workspace Owner to export content from private channels and one to one or group direct messages as needed and permitted by law,” Slack literature reads. Messages on Slack are also not encrypted, as they are on many apps like WhatsApp and Signal, increasing the likelihood that they’re being seen by unwanted eyes. Another workplace favorite, Microsoft, is no less obliging to those who want to snoop on their staff. In a promotional video from last year, the company bragged of boosted “supervision capabilities … designed to help you monitor communication in your digital environment, and encourage the right behaviour.”
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Page 15 March 19, 2020
Propaganda CONTINUED FROM PAGE 5
World Health Organization Director General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus called the Chinese-Italian cooperation a “heartwarming example of solidarity” on Twitter. “A friend in need is a friend indeed,” Zhang Jun, China’s ambassador to the United Nations, responded. “We’ll do whatever we can to help other countries in fighting the COVID-19.” Unlike, say, China’s No. 1 rival. As China has polished its global image by dispatching supplies to the countries hit hard by coronavirus, U.S. President Donald Trump has faced questions over his reported attempt to secure exclusive American rights to a vaccine under development in Germany. Though U.S. officials disputed the story, German government representatives insisted it was true and vowed to make any vaccine developed in Germany available to the world. “Viruses don’t have a nationality and neither will the antidote,” German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier said during a national address on Monday in a thinly veiled rebuke of Trump, who has begun referring to coronavirus as “the Chinese Virus.” Trump’s decision last week to seal U.S. borders to Europeans without first informing the EU also did little
Serbian President Aleksandar Vučić was deeply critical of the EU, claiming that Brussels had left Serbia in the lurch. ANDREJ ISAKOVIC/AFP VIA GETTY IMAGES
to burnish his image. While such moves have become commonplace in recent days, the aggressive manner in which Trump justified the decision (“When they raise taxes on us, they don’t consult us”) confirmed to many Europeans that he has little interest in helping allies. More surprising is that European countries don’t seem that interested either. Italy isn’t the only country not feeling the Europe’s love. Serbia, which is in the midst of the circuitous process to join the EU, com-
plained on Monday that the bloc’s ban on the export of critical medical supplies had left the country in the lurch. President Aleksandar Vučić, a politician not known for hiding his emotions at the best of times, unleashed a torrent of criticism on Brussels. “By now you all understood that great international solidarity actually does not exist,” he told a news conference. “European solidarity does not exist. That was a fairy tale.” Melodrama aside, China long ago identified Serbia as an important partner in southeastern Europe
Crisis CONTINUED FROM PAGE 5
from foreign affairs and finance to agriculture and the environment. NEW RULES
In a draft document seen by POLITICO that ambassadors will discuss Wednesday, the Council has set out new rules lowering the number of officials required to attend Council meetings in person given that the coronavirus pandemic “makes it difficult to reach the quorum required” to take decisions — a departure from the regular Rules of Procedure. Still, the physical presence of some officials, particularly those representing the presidency of the Council of the EU and the general secretariat, will be required for the meeting to be considered valid. The document states that formal meetings “cannot take place with all participants participating through videoconferencing.” And for now, at least, the rules will be temporary. But some officials said they believed it was inevitable that the possibility of virtual attendance would become permanent — an acceptance of the new digital reality even if there is no pandemic. “This derogation should apply for a duration of one month, renewable,” the document states. Already, the limits of virtual meetings have been clear in recent days. European Council President Charles Michel has organized two videoconferences of heads of state and government since the coronavirus outbreak, and while leaders agreed to take several steps, Michel had to issue “president’s conclusions” after each session because leaders must be present to issue formal European Council conclusions. The question of virtual meetings and remote voting has consumed EU diplomats in recent days as the scope of the coronavirus crisis, and the emergency response to it, raised the possibility that quarantine mea-
European leaders on the screen, left, on a conference call with European Council President Charles Michel last week. STEPHANIE LECOCQ/AFP VIA GETTY IMAGES
sures would continue for weeks or months. “Many member states think that we need to keep a physical presence in order to avoid the impression that the EU is shutting down,” said one diplomat, who disagreed with that more traditional view. “I believe in the moment when Europe is declared the center of the pandemic it would be better to do everything in videoconference,” the diplomat said. “In a moment like this, I’m not sure citizens’ priority is to see whether ministers meet physically or not, and at least we would send the message that we take this threat seriously.” Without a change to modernize the rules, the diplomat said, “We run the risk that at the end we are not able to take decisions.” In the Parliament, a trio of MEPs — Pascal Durand, from the centrist Renew Europe Group, Daniel Freund of the Greens and Helmut Scholz from the far-left GUE party — wrote a letter to leaders urging changes to allow virtual plenary sessions. They wrote that “software used to sign amendments electronically could be adapted” to a plenary
vote. The letter, sent on Tuesday to Antonio Tajani, chairman of the Parliament’s Constitutional Affairs Committee, said that electronic tokens already issued to MEPs could be used to verify identities in casting votes remotely. The disruption from coronavirus has been especially difficult for the Parliament, which has 705 members, given that medical experts called for banning large gatherings. EMERGENCY MEASURES
In recent weeks, Parliament President David Sassoli has taken several emergency steps, including temporarily canceling some voting, sending staff home to telework, and scrapping the April plenary session in Strasbourg in favor of a mini-session in Brussels. With many EU countries in various states of lockdown, and air travel severely reduced with widespread flight cancellations, it is likely that many MEPs will not get to Brussels for that mini-session on April 1 — if it takes place at all. But Parliament officials say it is important the Parliament continues to meet and function during the crisis. The Parliament is planning to
and has cultivated Vučić for years by making substantial investments in the country. Vučić often berates the EU for not moving faster on Serbia’s membership application. His critics argue his real goal is to turn his population against the EU because he worries joining the club would threaten his iron grip on power in the country, something authoritarian China welcomes. Whatever the case, Vučić’s appearance — which went viral on social media — offered a huge win for China’s propaganda machine. Vučić, his voice dropping into a dramatic semi-whisper, explained that he had sent a special appeal to President Xi Jinping, addressing the Chinese leader as his “brother,” because the Chinese “are the only ones who can help us.” Likely sensing the shift in the PR tide, China has become bolder in recent days in trying to rewrite history, claiming without any evidence that the virus originated not in China, but in the U.S. “More evidence suggests that the virus was not originated at the seafood market in Wuhan at all, not to mention the so called ‘made in China,’” Lin, the Chinese ambassador, tweeted on Monday, as if to prove the maxim that truth is the first casualty of war. Trouble is, with the U.S. facing its own credibility issues in recent years, China’s false narrative threatens to spread as quickly as the coronavirus.
vote on a batch of coronavirus measures, including the European Commission’s plan to put forward a plan to free up €8 billion of unused regional development cash for member countries. In addition, the EU treaties stipulate that the Parliament should hold 12 plenary sessions every year. “We believe that even in exceptional cases, we have the duty to ensure legal clarity and to respect the democratic standards of the House,” the three MEPs wrote in the letter to Tajani. The letter suggested that the chair of the plenary “could communicate to all MEPs via telephone conference and live stream when votes are opened and closed.” Officials in the Parliament’s legal services have been scratching their heads to find alternative voting systems which would ensure that MEPs vote simultaneously, confidentially, securely and in sequence. In the meantime, the Parliament is expected to maintain committee meetings next week. Those involve fewer MEPs than a plenary session, although the numbers involved can still be substantial. A European Parliament committee consists of between 25 and 81 MEPs, and also requires aides and other support staff to function. In the letter, the three MEPs wrote that on urgent committee votes, “it could be considered to take decisions and votes by sending voting lists by email to the secretariat while results would be verified in a second step by a telephone call.” Officials have also been working to find other ways to streamline the legislative process. On Tuesday, French MEP Younous Omarjee, in agreement with the Parliament’s political coordinators, triggered a process that would allow the Commission’s proposal on emergency money for coronavirus to move forward without amendments directly to the plenary, where it would be given priority over other items on the agenda and voted on following a shortened debate period. Lili Bayer contributed reporting.
“Viruses don’t have a nationality and neither will the antidote.” FRANK-WALTER STEINMEIER, GERMAN PRESIDENT
News
March 19, 2020 Page 16
PRO BRIEFING
AG R I C U LT U R E & F O O D
EU EASES CAP DEADLINE DUE TO CORONAVIRUS The Commission said March 17 it will allow EU countries to extend the deadline for filing Common Agricultural Policy
GREEN RIDE BREAKDOWN
subsidy claims by one month. The relaxation of rules will apply to direct payments and some rural development disbursements, although Brussels said it would be up to each country to decide whether to use the extension. “The
new application deadline will now be June 15, 2020, instead of May 15, which will give farmers more flexibility to complete their applications during these difficult and unprecedented times,” a Commission statement said.
Almost a quarter of cars sold in Finland in 2019 were alternatively powered. Slovenia was the EU’s worst performer, with
Green ride about 96breakdown percent of cars registered last year running on petrol or diesel.
Almost a quarter of cars sold in Finland in 2019 were alternatively powered. Slovenia was the EU’s worst performer, with about 96 percent of cars registered last year running on petrol or diesel.
Cars sold in in2019, 2019,bybyfuel fuel type Cars sold type In In percentage percentage 100%
75%
50%
25%
Be lg ium Ro m an ia Sl ov ak ia Cz ec h Re p. Sl ov en ia
a Fr an ce Hu ng ar y Lit hu an ia
ce
Au str i
Gr ee
nm
ar k
ia
De
La tv
Po la nd Ge rm an y
U. K.
ga l Bu lga ria Es to nia
ain
Po r tu
Sp
Ire lan d
Ita ly
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Fi nla nd Ne th er lan ds
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Non-electric alternatively powered vehicles Electrically chargeable vehicles Hybrid electric vehicles Diesel Petrol
Includes the United Kingdom. Data not available for Croatia, Cyprus, Malta and Luxembourg.
Includes the United Kingdom. Data not available for Croatia, Cyprus, Malta and Luxembourg. SOURCE: ACEA This DataPoint presentation was researched and produced by POLITICO data analysts in accordance with the highest journalistic standards. Source: ACEA.
POLITICO Pro DataPoint
BREXIT
UK SETS OUT EU DATA FLOWS FRAMEWORK The U.K. has set out why the EU should give its data protection regime the thumbs up. Documents published by the U.K. government March 13 provide an overview of the U.K.’s legal framework “underpinning high data protection standards in order to assist the European Commission in conducting its assessment.” Prime Minister Boris Johnson in February confirmed that the U.K. intends to secure a so-called adequacy decision from the European Commission to enable personal data to continue to flow freely from the EU to the U.K. and Gibraltar.
COMPETITION
F I N A N C I A L S ER V I C E S
S U S TA I N A B I L I T Y
EU FINANCE CHIEFS PROMISE CORONAVIRUS AID
FARM TO FORK, BIODIVERSITY PLANS DELAYED
European finance ministers “will protect our citizens and our currency” from the coronavirus outbreak that has left financial markets in a tailspin, Portugal’s Mário Centeno said March 16. “Our commitment to provide support in this time of need is unlimited,” said Centeno, who heads the group of finance ministers from the euro countries, in a statement after a videoconference with all EU27 finance chiefs. He added that his Eurogroup of ministers from the 19 countries using the common currency would meet again next week.
The Farm to Fork strategy and the EU’s new 2030 plan for biodiversity have been postponed, according to a new agenda of the College of Commissioners published March 18. Their publication is now set for April 29, rather than March 25, subject to confirmation. However, the issues to be tackled in the strategy “will still be on the agenda after the coronavirus. That’s why it shouldn’t be delayed too much,” the chair of the European Parliament’s environment committee, Pascal Canfin, told POLITICO.
F I N A N C I A L S ER V I C E S
C Y B ER S E C U R I T Y
MOBILIT Y
EU MONEY LAUNDERING WATCHDOG EMERGES IN BRUSSELS PLANS
EU AUDITORS TO PROBE DISINFORMATION ACTION PLAN
AIRPORTS WANT HELP AS TRAFFIC TANKS
The European Court of Auditors is launching an audit of the Commission’s Disinformation Action Plan, it said March 17. The EU’s internal auditing institution “will assess the EU action plan against disinformation in terms of its relevance, the results achieved so far, as well as its accountability framework,” it said in a statement. The audit will include the European External Action Services’ StratCom task force and the Code of Practice with social media companies’ pledges to fight fake news, among other programs. The audit report will be published in 2021.
Europe’s airports have lost €2 billion in revenue and seen 100 million fewer passengers compared with last year, according to airport lobby ACI-Europe. In a March 17 open letter to EU transport ministers, ACI-Europe said air travel in Europe the previous week decreased by 54 percent compared with the equivalent week last year. The airports called on the EU to ensure “extraordinary and urgent funding and cash flow resources where needed,” adding that “this funding needs to be available under similar conditions as those that will be considered for airlines.”
FRANCE CLOBBERS APPLE WITH €1.1B FINE France’s antitrust authority hit Apple with a €1.1 billion fine March 16 for breaking competition rules, marking the regulator’s largest-ever financial penalty. The Autorité de la Concurrence watchdog said that Apple had entered into illegal competition-killing agreements with wholesale distributors Tech Data and Ingram Micro. The distributors were sanctioned €76.1 million and €63 million, respectively. The watchog also found that Apple had imposed resale prices on resellers and abused its position as a must-have supplier.
Left: Apple is accused of entering into illegal competitionkilling agreements. Right: Eurogroup chief Mário Centeno. JOSH EDELSON/ AFP VIA GETTY IMAGES CARLOS COSTA/ AFP VIA GETTY IMAGES
MOBILIT Y
RYANAIR TO GROUND 80 PERCENT OF ITS FLEET Irish budget carrier Ryanair said March 16 it will reduce its operating fleet of close to 470 airplanes by 80 percent over the next week as demand for air travel plummets and governments impose travel restrictions to curb the spread of the coronavirus. In a statement, Ryanair said while an 80 percent cut will be enforced in April and May, “a full grounding of the fleet cannot be ruled out.” The group said it has €4 billion in cash to deal with the crisis.
The Commission may propose an EU anti-money laundering watchdog next year to strengthen enforcement, under plans obtained by POLITICO. Initiatives on AML supervision are scheduled for early 2021, said the draft. People will have the chance to comment in a public consultation before any proposal. The plan aims to have an EU watchdog in place by 2023, with a single rulebook for combating money laundering. The authority would aim to oversee national agencies, with a remit covering the financial industry as well as other sectors.
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Page 17 March 19, 2020
Optics
JONATHAN TWINGLEY JERSEY CITY, NEW JERSEY All Boxed In: After nearly 20 years living in the same Manhattan apartment building, my wife and I recently relocated, across the Hudson River. We made the move partly for the extra space. But the current quarantine situation has me feeling like I’m right back where I started.
DRAWING OUR NEW NORMAL
As the coronavirus pandemic sweeps through Europe and beyond, jobs are drying up as offices shutter. We’re working at home, often in isolation — something freelancers are already quite familiar with. But it’s not all bad: In crisis, as often happens, we’re finding community where we might not have looked previously. POLITICO reached out to dozens of artists around the globe and asked them to draw what they’re seeing and feeling.
JEN RENNINGER TAMPA, FLORIDA There is so much anxiety centered around the uncertainty of the pandemic. With that in mind, our family decided to focus on the good things that are happening in the face of this chaos: helping neighbors prepare, especially our elderly friends who live alone. Neighbors helping neighbors — all stocking our shelves so we can all stay safe — has become our go-to way to stay sane.
Optics
ALEKSANDRA STANGLEWICZ
SIMONE NORONHA
JON STICH
WARSAW
BROOKLYN, NEW YORK
OAKLAND, CALIFORNIA
This is me, drawing and looking for new commissions, sitting on the couch with my dog Frajda next to me — just wondering what’s going on in the world. I still can’t believe this is all happening.
Everything feels tense, urgent, scary. All I can do is stay home, keep up with the news, call friends and family. I’m doing fine, but how are you?
The Bay Area is great, but the juxtaposition of wealth and poverty is clear. This isn’t a scene I saw, but considering how haywire everything has gotten here, it’s not difficult to imagine a well-to-do fellow skirting past a tent encampment on one of those unicycle things, balancing evidence of his excess.
MARIA KOFMAN
SONNY ROSS
KLAAS VERPLANCKE
CONEY ISLAND, NEW YORK
MANCHESTER, ENGLAND
BRUGGE, BELGIUM
Typically, Coney Island is a social and crowded area all times of the year, but it’s a ghost town now. Elderly people frequently exercise and hang out on the boardwalk, but thankfully everyone is staying home since that demographic is most susceptible. Self-isolating is more difficult than it seems!
Being a self-employed illustrator obviously comes with risks built in. For me, self isolating is nothing new. But when the whole supply chain does the same, suddenly a very busy month becomes an empty one — and rent is still due. It feels like I’ve been fired eight times already this week.
BERLIN Berliners have been ready for social distancing and self-isolation for some time. Oppression is in their muscle memory, and survival and community is reawakening under the larger threat of the virus. Ordinarily this is a tremendously grumpy and guarded bunch, but suddenly there are smiles and chats in the streets between complete strangers — at a distance. The one place this all breaks down seems to be in the supermarket queue, where personal space is seen as an invitation for line-cutters. So a 2-meter space between you and the next person is a steep learning curve. I made this illustration to tell the story of “Hamsterkäufe” (hamster buying) and and the struggle of keeping distance in the queue for Berliners. And with a shortage of medical masks, true Berlin attire is proving to be a fair alternative.
JACKIE FERRENTINO
s
ANN KIERNAN s
My work often has a high level of “impossibility” — only possible on paper. Now the surrealism in my imagination is as real as reality. It’s a strange feeling, because in normal circumstances the imagination is always one step ahead of reality. Now it seems as if I can’t keep up with that reality, let alone transcend it.
BROOKLYN, NEW YORK Everything now has a sense of unreality. Disconnected from friends, family and the outside world, I feel like I’m nowhere even when I’m right here in my apartment, looking out my window.
March 19, 2020 Page 19
LENNART GÄBEL
NICOLAS AZNAREZ
DANIEL ZALKUS
HAMBURG, GERMANY
PAMPLONA, SPAIN
CHICAGO, ILLINOIS
Around 90 percent of my day is entertaining my kids (ages 1 and 3) while my wife is at work. When she’s home and the kids are asleep, I try to cram an entire day’s work into the few hours left. So dear coronavirus, if you’re reading this: How about a cease-fire?
Everybody is locked down, but that’s created a sense of community. Neighbors chat on their balconies — from a safe distance. Before, that would have been unthinkable. We created a chat group for the block, so that if anybody needs anything, somebody can help. It’s bringing out the best in people.
Last week was crazy; the news cycle seemed to go from 0 to 60 in the span of an hour. Yesterday I went to the grocery store and was surprised to see that many of the shelves are empty: produce and meat aisles are especially barren. Fortunately, I’d stocked up a week ago, but that was just dumb luck.
RICARDO TOMÁS
KYUNG CHYUN
CARLO GIAMBARRESI
KALMAR, SWEDEN
NEW YORK, NEW YORK
SARDINIA, ITALY
This thing is everywhere. This thing that came out of nowhere a few months ago. I have so many questions. I spend the days with one eye on my home country of Spain, and the difficult situation. It’s time to be responsible: Stay home, take extreme precautions if you must venture out, and pay attention to reliable news sources — don’t sow disinformation. But above all, I’m grateful to all the people working toward making our lives easier through this crisis.
I’m an immigrant woman, living and working in the States. I’m originally from South Korea and most of my family are in Seoul, one of the most affected cities outside of China. I’m in contact with my family, and they’re sending some harrowing stories: Standing in line for government-provided masks in frigid weather; local markets running out of rice, restocking, then quickly running out again. My 91-year-old grandfather — who is deeply in love with my grandmother — hasn’t seen her since January because her living facility has banned all visitors. Already separated by thousands of miles, the crisis is making the distance between my family and me feel immense. I’m more anxious about my family’s health than I am worried about my own, but I guess that’s normal. It’s accentuated by the pandemic. In this drawing, I wanted to show the distance — physical and emotional — between us.
Last week, the government issued a lockdown order here, so we’re now in complete isolation in a small village by the sea. Working from home and taking care of a 1-year-old baby is quite challenging but it actually feels normal for us. I really hope things will return to a sense of normalcy for everyone else soon.
ERIC DIOTTE TOKYO Hanami (cherry blossom viewing) is one of Japan’s most iconic and long-standing spring traditions. As the trees begin to bloom, more and more of these gatherings are being canceled; a celebration in isolation.
SARA GIRONI CARNEVALE NAPLES, ITALY Hostage: I’ve never seen the city so quiet. Everything is locked down except for supermarkets and pharmacies. As a freelance illustrator, I usually work from home, so not much has really changed for me, though the other day I was reminded of the restrictions placed on everyone: I went outside for a run, and the police turned me right back around.
RACHEL MERRILL QUEENS, NEW YORK I’m currently in Dallas, Texas, trying to get help for my alcoholic father. He’s 75 and that, of course, makes him the perfect target for the virus. We can’t actually see him because his detox facility is on lockdown. He’s pictured here with my sister in the emergency room.
Forum
AN EXTROVERT’S GUIDE TO ISOLATION How to preserve your sanity — and be a good citizen — on lockdown BY MARIE LE CONTE IN LONDON
There’s never been a better time to be an introvert. For people who yearn to stay alone at home, quietly reading books and taking long baths, the current coronavirus pandemic is, if not a dream come true, at least an opportunity to indulge their interests. In fact, chances are their governments have instructed them to do exactly that. Sadly, these things also happen to be an extrovert’s worst nightmare. To those who flourish when in the company of others, the next few weeks — or months — may well be hell. So, how can you tend to your social life (and mental health) without being a bad citizen? At time of writing, most European governments have moved away from recommending mere social distancing, and are encouraging people to stay at home as much as they can — and if they go out, to go alone. Still, if human contact becomes out of the question, it does not mean you should cut yourself off from society altogether. Instead of being at a bar or in a restaurant, why not schedule some drinks over Skype? For it to work, take it seriously: Prepare yourself a drink (maybe now is the time to get into intricate cocktails, or start making your own kombucha?), ditch the pajamas, and even put some makeup on if you’re so inclined. Preparing a meal beforehand is not compulsory, but can be a nice touch if previously agreed by both parties. It isn’t quite the same, of course, but having someone to talk to and a face to look at that is not your own should stave off madness for at least a few more days. Chatting in this way also has its upsides; without the risk of people eavesdropping around you, you
It isn’t quite the same, of course, but having someone to talk to and a face to look at that is not your own should stave off madness for at least a few more days.
can share sensitive political gossip or salacious bedroom stories with abandon. The same goes for phone calls, of course; if evening Skype drinks are kept as a special occasion, long calls with friends, favorite colleagues or mums should not be used sparingly. Embrace your inner teenage girl, and learn (or relearn) to spend hours on end on the phone, not really talking about anything in particular; few things are as comforting as inane chatter while you’re pottering around the house. In a similar vein, if you were slow or reluctant to join the WhatsApp or Instagram voice note revolution, now is the time to go all in. Text messaging is more convenient when you’re on the go, but let’s face it: If you have to spend a fortnight by yourself, you’ll come to cherish anything that takes time and demands all your attention. Once you’re comfortable with the format, you can start experimenting. If all parties agree to a clause that all that happens in quarantine stays in quarantine, there is no reason why you shouldn’t start serenading your loved ones from afar, or practicing your rapping skills and asking for constructive feedback. Similarly, you might experiment with online games and find one you like that allows multiple players. One issue with self-isolation is that people won’t have much to talk about after their third or fourth day — no matter how hard you try to make them interesting, there are only so many times you can discuss your meals and dreams. Giving yourself and your chosen friend(s) something concrete to discuss would be useful — or at the very least something to get playfully competitive about. After all, playing the same game several days in a row can give you a shared sense of purpose, and heaven knows that it is something that will probably go missing by the end of the first week. Finally — and especially if you’re self-employed — it may be a good idea to convince some freelance friends to join Slack and chat on it during work hours. Getting work done without colleagues or real-life distractions around can be tough at the best of times, but it might prove impossible when you know there’s no pub to look forward to at the end of the day. By actively being able to discuss what you’re working on with some people (and take time out yourself by advising them on their work), chances are you’ll feel more productive — and a bit more sane. And really, if you’ve tried all of these but your skin is still itching at the mere thought of spending another day alone, you can always agree to meet nearby friends in a park and stand five meters away from them, then shout at each other until you feel refreshed. That might not be dignified, but neither is being an extrovert forced away from what keeps them alive. Good luck to us all; we’ll need it. Marie Le Conte is a freelance journalist based in London and the author of “Haven’t You Heard…? Gossip, power and how politics really works” (535, September 2019).
HOW CORONAVIRUS Quick fixes and crowdpleasing politics won’t save you when it comes to a true emergency
BY OTTO ENGLISH IN LONDON
This is how the embryonic days of war must feel. I’ve lived in London my whole adult life; I’ve witnessed IRA bombs, terror attacks and riots; but I’ve never observed such palpable unease as this. There’s a deep sense of foreboding, a tacit dread of the tsunami moving inexorably toward us from just below the horizon. My local supermarket, like others across the country, has seen wholesale panic-buying. On my last visit, many shelves and fridges had been stripped bare. In coronavirus Britain, “keeping calm and carrying on” is in ever more dwindling supply than toilet paper. Many Britons retain an unhealthy obsession with the war that coined that iconic phrase. During the Brexit years, the populist right had a fondness for invoking wartime Britain whenever some obstacle was put in the way of their
Boris Johnson — seen here through a TV camera’s viewfinder — unveils coronavirus emergency plans at No. 10 Downing Street on March 3. POOL PHOTO BY SIMON DAWSON VIA EPA
sacred sovereignty. No-deal Brexit would be just fine, because “we” had survived Dunkirk and won the war with pluck, ingenuity and Spitfire planes. As the current crisis has unfolded, they have been at it again. Politicians and conservative pundits have busied themselves cooking up batches of Britain’s magic potion, the fabled “Blitz Spirit,” to ward off the virus. Hitler’s bombs were an unwelcome inconvenience, but after the Luftwaffe had done their worst, we Brits simply dusted ourselves down, picked the rubble out of our cups of tea and carried on. Or so the story goes. Geneticists have, as yet, failed to identify the DNA strand innate within the British race that makes us more stoic than everyone else, but that doesn’t stop many believing in it. For such people, you would think that the arrival of the coronavirus on these shores would be a blessing. Here is an opportunity to show the world what the U.K., newly reunited with its enchanted blue passports, can do. Here is a chance to validate our matchless ability to rise above catastrophe, just as “we” did in the war; and in Boris Johnson we have an ersatz Winston Churchill, ready to take on the job. The similarity between Johnson
March 19, 2020 Page 21
COULD KILL POPULISM and Churchill has long been cultivated by the current PM. When he was mayor of London, he even wrote a book called “The Churchill Factor” in which he hammered the parallel home, with all the subtlety of a pneumatic drill. But Johnson is no Churchill. For all his many failures, Winston was a natural leader, who could devour detail at a ravenous pace and who was constantly brimming with ideas. Boris’ aides have been told to limit briefs to no more than two sides of A4 paper, and even his ministers admit that, having gotten into Downing Street, he has no idea what to do next. Johnson might be a great turn on panel shows, but his unexceptional career in politics demonstrates a lazy man of limited vision, singularly unequipped to the task of steering the nation through a crisis. Like U.S. President Donald Trump, with whom he has far more in common than Churchill, Johnson is a celebrity politician whose electoral success is symptomatic of a different sort of virus. That disease is called populism, and much like coronavirus, it is nasty and rampant and has triggered the unsolicited self-isolation of a nation. There’s a general acceptance that Brexit and the election of Trump were both, in part, side effects of the fallout of the financial
crisis in 2008. Ordinary people wanted to teach the elites a lesson. But that was not the whole story. America did well in the Obama years: The U.S. economy grew steadily during his terms of office and continued to do so through three years of Trump. As of December 2019, the U.S. was in its 11th consecutive year of growth. At the time of the Brexit vote in 2016, median incomes in the U.K. were on an upward trend, unemployment was at a near-record low and the country had the fifth-best performing economy in the world. Ironically, it was that very sense of economic exuberance that made the terrible decisions in the U.S. and the U.K. possible. As economies boom, perceived inequality is more keenly felt as the gap between rich and poor widens, offering fertile ground for populists. But even more crucially, the twin indulgences of Trump and Brexit could only have happened in advanced, wealthy countries where a good proportion of the people felt secure enough to take the risk on political wild cards. Those who voted for Trump, Brexit and Johnson did so sensing that things could be shaken up a bit and everything would still be OK. Enter the coronavirus. The outbreak takes a hand grenade to the
conceit that everything is going to be all right — and thus it presents a very real threat to politicians like Trump and Johnson. The essence of modern British and American populism is bigpersonality politicians promising quick-fix solutions to complex or confected problems. It’s an approach that has its appeal in the good times, but when a proper emergency unfolds, populists and their crowd-pleasing politics are quickly exposed as ill-equipped to deal with the fall out. Both Britain’s and America’s responses to the coronavirus crisis have been disastrously muddled and confused. As events unfolded, an off-kilter Johnson increasingly seemed to be ducking out of sight. When he did appear, on ITV’s “This Morning” to appeal for calm, his muddled performance only made matters worse with a segment in which he appeared to suggest that the nation could “take it on the chin” being subsequently widely shared on social media. Although taken somewhat out of context, the clip added to the general mood of confusion and anxiety. Health Secretary Matt Hancock was later obliged to distance himself from Patrick Vallance, the country’s chief scientific adviser, after Vallance suggested that if 40
Boris Johnson is a celebrity politician whose electoral success is symptomatic of a different sort of virus.
million Britons caught the disease “herd immunity” could be achieved, neglecting to mention that an estimated 250,000 might die in the process and that the NHS would be overwhelmed. Whitehall, meanwhile, has been accused of dishing out contradictory advice from frequently anonymous sources, which has compounded confusion, fear and uncertainty. Seeking to reinforce his Churchillian credentials, an embattled Johnson subsequently sought to go on the attack, declaring war on the virus and seeking out manufacturers who might be able to repurpose factories to produce ventilators at speed, much as firms in wartime Britain turned production of furniture over to the making of the De Havilland Mosquito plane. Johnson’s new tack backfired when it was reported that he had joked to 60 business leaders in a conference call that he is dubbing the strategy “Operation Last Gasp.” Johnson’s diminishing band of supporters claimed that this was a classic case of “British black humor,” but very few people were laughing. Some measures to mitigate the crisis, such as a £330 billion package of loans and extended credit, have been welcomed. But others, including the rushed Coronavirus Bill, have been greeted with concerns about their long-term democratic implications. Worse still for Johnson, his every appearance alongside the calm and sincere Chancellor Rishi Sunak, who appears fully on top of his brief, makes the prime minister look like a startled political minnow. In the U.S., meanwhile, Trump’s chaotic and self-promoting leadership style has become ever more out of step with the increasingly paranoid mood. His illogical and inconsistent travel bans, the calamitous lack of testing and constant U-turning have caused disquiet and fear in a country that still shockingly lacks proper universal health care. Both Trump and Johnson wanted power for power’s sake and were willing to get there by any means. In pursuit of it, neither demonstrated any respect for the truth. By December 2019, the Washington Post estimated that Trump had told 15,413 lies during his time in office, averaging 14.6 lies a day. Johnson, too, has carved a career out of deceit. During the EU referendum, he headed a campaign that enabled an environment where expertise was snubbed, fake news prospered and where vital EU workers, including doctors and nurses, were driven away. And yet all of this might still have an unexpected, long-term outcome; for while nobody in their right minds would welcome the spread of coronavirus, it could eventually bring about the death of populism. This crisis is a wake-up call to us all. The virus has no respect for borders, blue passports or sovereignty. It demonstrates, fundamentally, that we live in an interconnected world; that we need nations to work together in times of crisis as well as times of peace; and that to achieve all of the above we need serious, sensible politicians of good intent at the helm. In the meantime, as the selfpromoting popinjays in Downing Street and the White House plough on, let’s just hope that there are enough experts and grown-ups left to take back control from the virus. Otto English is the pen name used by Andrew Scott, a writer and playwright based in London.
Opinion
HOT TAKES “It will all work out.” U.S. PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP, TWEETING ON JANUARY 24 ABOUT THE CORONAVIRUS
“We have it very well under control. We have very little problem in this country at this moment — five. And those people are all recuperating successfully.” TRUMP ON JANUARY 30
“Looks like by April, you know, in theory, when it gets a little warmer, it miraculously goes away.” TRUMP ON FEBRUARY 10
“It’s going to disappear. One day — it’s like a miracle — it will disappear.” TRUMP ON FEBRUARY 29
“People are surprised that I understand it. Every one of these doctors said, ‘How do you know so much about this?’ Maybe I have a natural ability.”
Europe’s economy is in safe hands
TRUMP ON MARCH 6
BEYOND THE BUBBLE
“I’m not concerned.” TRUMP ON MARCH 7
“It will go away. Just stay calm. It will go away.” TRUMP ON MARCH 10
“I’ve always treated the Chinese Virus very seriously, and have done a very good job from the beginning.” TRUMP ON MARCH 18
Despite missteps, EU leaders have reacted with unusual vigor to the coronavirus crisis
BY MUJTABA RAHMAN IN LONDON
Criticism is raging against the European Union’s economic response to the coronavirus pandemic. For example, the supposed lack of action by eurozone finance ministers after their teleconference Monday has been used by critics to argue that the EU is once again “behind the curve” and acting — or reacting — “incrementally.” Some voices believe the Eurogroup should now even be dismantled as a result. The criticism is probably unfair. In the space of little more than a week, the European Central Bank
There’s reason to be hopeful about the EU’s coronavirus economic measures so far. CLAUDIO ONORATI/EPA
has signaled a willingness to deviate from its capital key, the rules that govern how many bonds it can buy from any given country, while Eurozone finance ministers have in practice suspended the EU’s 3 percent deficit limit. In Italy, the government has earmarked expenditures worth €25 billion, close to 1.3 percent of GDP, that will take Rome’s deficit well above the Stability and Growth Pact’s talismanic limit (and probably much higher once the country’s inevitable recession has been factored in). Ditto in France, where President Emmanuel Macron’s €45 billion of measures announced yesterday is likely to take the deficit to at least 3.7 percent of GDP this year. German Finance Minister Olaf Scholz has even signaled that the two unmovable pillars of German fiscal policy — the black zero (balanced budgets) and the constitutional debt brake (deficits no greater than 0.35 percent of GDP) — are no longer sacrosanct. That these moves have been supported — indeed cheer-leaded — by the EU’s most hawkish principals,
such as the European Commissioner for Financial Stability Valdis Dombrovskis and Dutch Finance Minister Wopke Hoekstra, shows the degree of the buy-in they enjoy. That they came as part of the first wave of the EU’s response shows how much further leaders will be willing to and are likely to go. Of course, there have been missteps. ECB President Christine Lagarde’s poor verbal execution at her press conference last Thursday stood in sharp contrast to the masterclass the day before from former Bank of England Governor Mark Carney and his successor Andrew Bailey, and created unnecessary panic in the markets. This should never be repeated — and likely won’t be. After all, central banking is a learned skill. Federal Reserve President Jay Powell’s first press conferences weren’t great either — and he had been on the Fed’s Board; he is doing much better now. Lagarde is still one of the few experienced economic leaders left from the last crisis. She will have to do better next time.
March 19, 2020 Page 23
— for now The package she unveiled was also quite smart and strong. The “all of the above” approach — bond purchases, term loans at a new low rate, a new bank lending program and regulatory and capital forbearance — gets at the credit and liquidity issues more directly than rate cuts could have. It would have required real skill to bring the ECB’s Governing Council around to this set of measures. Certainly, more will be needed, but as a first hit, the ECB’s substantive response was a good start. Most of the other criticism aimed at European economic policymakers is focused on the lack of coordinated action at the EU level. If this is not remedied, it will mean that only countries with greater fiscal space will be able to safely spend more than those with high deficits and high debts. So far however, it is the latter, including Italy, France, Spain and Belgium, that have been hardest hit by the coronavirus outbreak. But even here, more is likely — and soon. In the first instance, coordi-
After all, central banking is a learned skill.
nated action is likely to involve the use of the European Financial Stability Mechanism. This instrument, housed in Article 122 of the EU’s treaties, was first used in the 2008 Greek debt crisis. It allows the European Commission to offer support to national governments by issuing debt to capital markets, backed by the EU’s budget, which it then lends to member countries. However, the EFSM’s firepower — €60 billion — would be nowhere near what is needed. That is why it is being considered as part of a broader package with the European Stability Mechanism (ESM). The French in particular favor the use of the ESM, as Macron believes that anything that resembles large, common EU action is important in response to the large-scale market meltdown seen so far (Macron is rightly frustrated with the EU’s piecemeal and clumsy initial actions, but accepts that this is the nature of a 27-headed organization). The ESM would give eurozone members access to €410 billion (the Fund’s lending capacity is €500 billion, with approximately €90 billion of loans outstanding), so sizeable compared to the amounts available under the EFSM, or indeed, the EU budget. The biggest benefit, however, is that an ESM credit line would unlock the unlimited firepower of the ECB (the “enhanced” credit line certainly would; possibly the “precautionary” one too). Criticism of Monday’s Eurogroup meeting centered on the fact that no “match ready” ESM plan emerged. But this was never the right expectation, as several issues — how best the ESM could be repurposed; what conditions would be attached to any financial support to make it more acceptable to Rome and elsewhere; and whether this would require changes to the ESM’s treaty — still need to be worked out. But compared to the signals sent so far — in essence a suspension of the Stability and Growth Pact; flexibility over the capital key; the black zero and the debt brake — these are likely to prove details that won’t prevent bolder ESM and ECB action to help vulnerable eurozone members manage and mitigate the economic fallout of coronavirus. The fact that the epidemic is an external shock, not the result of populist fiscal policies or financial mismanagement, will help limit fears of moral hazard in Northern Europe — and facilitate any changes that need to be made. There is some discussion in Brussels and among the investment community as to whether an ESM program would make sense for Italy alone, or all vulnerable, high debt, high deficit member countries. While there is no consensus at the moment, even the French don’t exclude some form of participation — “dipping in” in the words of senior French sources — if this was framed as broad help for all, “not a cure for the weak.” Given how quickly the crisis is unfolding, I suspect substantial movement and even greater policy coordination at a later stage — especially as the epidemic moves to its exponential phase. Whatever one thinks of the way European governments have handled the immediate epidemiological threat, there’s reason to be slightly more hopeful about the economic measures so far. Mujtaba Rahman is the head of Eurasia Group’s Europe practice and the author of POLITICO’s Beyond the Bubble column.
Is Europe ready for a Democratic president? The next administration in Washington is unlikely to settle for business as usual BY MAX BERGMANN IN WASHINGTON
Europe may have given up on America at just the wrong time. After three years of hostility from U.S. President Donald Trump, many in Europe have concluded that the collapse in transatlantic relations is not an aberration but a reflection of a new normal. French President Emmanuel Macron vocally outlined this perspective in his “brain death of NATO” interview, pointing to U.S. President Barack Obama’s pivot to Asia and his general ambivalence toward Europe as indicative of a broader, structural trend in American policy. Therefore, according to this view, even if a Democrat were to win in November, U.S policy toward Europe won’t be all that different than Trump’s. This is entirely wrong. And such fatalism about the transatlantic relationship could leave Europe unprepared for a U.S. administration that is ready to build a new partnership. A Democratic victory is a much more likely proposition than many Europeans realize. If a Democrat wins, whether that’s Bernie Sanders or, as is looking increasingly certain, Joe Biden, the new administration will immediately seek to renew the transatlantic alliance. Every serious Democratic candidate for president has promised to rebuild and strengthen relationships with democratic allies, particularly in Europe. This is not idle campaign rhetoric. A new Democratic administration will immediately come knocking on Europe’s door, wanting not just to make up — but, more importantly, to get to work on a long list of issues: fighting climate change; reigniting economic talks; regulating tech, social media and the financial industry; and addressing threats from Russia, Iran and China. These are topics that are often best addressed not through the traditional channel of transatlantic cooperation — NATO — but through direct collaboration between Washington and the European Union. In other words, a Democratic president would likely embrace the EU in a way no other American administration has before. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and the United Kingdom’s Brexit vote served as a wake-up call to those in the American capital who care about the transatlantic relationship — and indeed the global order more broadly. Suddenly, Europe’s union is no longer a given and European stability can no longer be taken for granted. Additionally, America’s geopolitical rivals, Russia and China, are seeking to divide the Continent through a combination of political and economic influence. While after 9/11, Washington viewed Europe as essentially geopolitically solved, it now increasingly sees it as geopolitically contested, especially with the rise of populist politics and illiberal governments. Europe, unfortunately, matters again. So, what happens when America pivots back? When a new Democratic administration comes knocking, seeking a genuine partnership — even, po-
tentially, a new “special relationship” with the EU — will Brussels answer the door? Expect whiplash. A reengaged Washington is unlikely to be willing to settle for the status quo. The EU will suddenly be asked to forge common bloc-wide approaches on thorny geopolitical issues where consensus may not exist. How will the EU react when Washington seeks to forge a common U.S.-EU approach toward China? Will a few member countries throw a wrench in the gears, blocking bold action as they have in other areas, when it comes to relations with Beijing? Defense cooperation is another potentially critical area. For decades, the U.S. has opposed the creation of common EU-wide defense capabilities, focusing ad-nauseum on the 2 percent national defense NATO spending pledge. However, a new administration — not beholden to the U.S. defense industry (which doesn’t care that much anyway) — may decide to embrace European defense efforts and encourage the EU to get more ambitious and spend more collectively. Washington may also get engaged in EU “internal matters,” taking a keen interest in issues like the EU budget. A U.S. administration wanting the EU to take bold action on climate change or counter China’s Belt and Road Initiative projects on the Continent would want the EU to have a larger budget so it can act. Just as China and Russia seek to use their bilateral relationships with European states to influence and stymie EU efforts, a re-engaged Washington may use its bilateral influence to press national capitals to back bold EU efforts. America would likely take a dim view of the parochialism emanating from the EU states advocating a smaller EU budget. Intensive American engagement will likely ruffle feathers. But this role would not be new for Washington. In the 1950s, American insistence on European integration efforts prompted West German Chancellor Konrad Adenauer to remark that “Americans were the best Europeans.” The optimistic among us hope a renewed American embrace of the European project will jolt the EU out of its current geopolitical stasis. With the largest economy in the world, defense spending on par with Russia and 500 million people, the EU should be a major global player. In this sense, its pursuit of “strategic autonomy” will not be seen in Washington as the EU “decoupling” from the U.S. but the EU finally getting its act together. But it would be foolish to ignore the real danger of Washington pivoting back to Europe and finding the EU — constantly stuck between the ambitions of its capital and the parochialism of its members — unwilling or unprepared. Americans in general are not patient. Optimism about U.S.-EU relations can quickly turn to pessimism. If that comes to pass, Europe risks being seen as not worth the new president’s diplomatic time and energy. Macron will have been proven right, as the U.S. turns back to Asia and elsewhere, relegating Europe to an afterthought. But that will be the fault of Europe, not the U.S. Max Bergmann, a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress, served in the State Department from 2011 to 2017. He is the author of the recent report “Embrace the EU: A New Progressive Approach for Reviving the Trans-Atlantic Alliance.”
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