The European Union faces a fresh breach with Washington over China’s handling of Hong Kong and a potential split with the U.K. on a major foreign policy issue for the first time since it left the EU in January.
Europe
Plans announced by European Union officials to address the bloc’s coronavirus-triggered economic crisis have surprised longtime EU watchers with their speed and gutsiness. If member states get onboard, the program stands to chart a new path for the bloc.
The bloc proposed an $824 billion recovery plan and a $1.2 trillion budget over the next seven years, which, if approved, would deepen its economic union in a way that even the eurozone debt crisis failed to achieve.
The country’s large Chinese community began locking down before the official quarantine began, and it is slower to exit, too.
England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, still reeling from Brexit, go their separate ways in trying to manage the pandemic.
Europe’s strategy of placing tens of millions of workers on paid leave has so far succeeded in stemming the widespread unemployment that has been seen in the U.S., but now governments across the continent are grappling with how to wean companies and workers off the support.
The emergence of a string of fresh coronavirus outbreaks in Europe has prompted debate about the speed of lifting lockdowns, with some politicians calling for selected restrictions to remain in place as governments reopen their economies.
Italian politicians also announced plans to recruit 60,000 volunteers to help oversee social distancing, after thousands of Italians celebrated the end of the country’s lockdown by going out.
At least 107 people have been found to be infected with the new coronavirus after some of them attended Sunday services at a church in Frankfurt two weeks ago, according to German officials, highlighting the growing risk of new outbreaks of the virus as Germany loosens restrictions on public gatherings.
A theater in Wiesbaden, Germany, is the first in Europe to lift the curtain on its stage after a two-month shutdown. But virus-proofing the concert hall has been a delicate balancing act.
Officers in Greece, escalating their tough measures against migration, have been detaining asylum seekers living in the country and forcibly expelling them to Turkey, according to accounts by migrants and human-rights activists.
A string of Covid-19 outbreaks in German meatpacking plants has prompted proposals to ban subcontracting and impose tougher inspection regimes, including stiffer fines.
As pharmaceutical giants edge closer to a potential vaccine for coronavirus, governments demanding access to any supplies are running up against a hard reality: the bill.
Germany’s foreign-intelligence agency now faces strict limits on its overseas activities after the country’s constitutional court ruled that the protections against arbitrary surveillance Germans enjoy applied to everyone world-wide.
A group of lawmakers broke away from French President Emmanuel Macron’s centrist political party, depriving the leader of an absolute majority in the National Assembly at a critical juncture in his efforts to steer France out of the coronavirus crisis.
Europeans are breathing with relief as they leave the strains of lockdown behind. But the strange new world that awaits the continent in the pandemic’s next phase is inspiring more fear than hope.
More than 80% of top European business leaders expect a recovery from the coronavirus pandemic will take between one and three years and have overwhelmingly pessimistic views on their companies’ near-term prospects, according to a survey by the Conference Board.
France and Germany on Monday proposed establishing a €500 billion Europe-wide recovery fund to support European regions worst hit by the coronavirus pandemic.
Italian restaurants are looking to start serving and earning again, but tourists are virtually gone, many Italians are struggling in the economic collapse, and new rules could keep diners out.
Bergamo, a northern Italian city hardest-hit by the pandemic and one of the most devastated in the world, is trying to restore a sense of normalcy. “If we get this right, we can turn the extreme misfortune that put us at the center of a global health pandemic into something positive,” says the city mayor.
