Issue link: https://maltatoday.uberflip.com/i/1224129
10 maltatoday | SUNDAY • 22 MARCH 2020 OPINION TELL you what: seeing as we're all stuck indoors with nothing to do for the time being… let's play a game. The rules are simple: I'll mention a well-known public personality, of relevance to the ongoing coronavirus emergen- cy; and you tell me the last time you heard that name reported in the local news. Ready? Let's go… Stella Kyriakidou. Huh? What do you mean, 'who the hell is that?' No, of course she's not one of the alien races in 'Star Trek: The Next Genera- tion'. She's the European Com- missioner for Health, for crying out loud. I mean… I did say 'rel- evant to the crisis', didn't I? And how much more relevant can you possibly get, than the per- son responsible for the Europe- an Union's policies and strate- gies regarding public health? But no matter, let's try some- one else: Charmaine Gauci. Ah, that's more like it! Not only does everyone and his dog instantly recognise her as the public face of the Superintend- ence of Public Health - and ap- plaud her for the extraordinary work she and her team are do- ing – but we all also remember exactly when we last saw her on the news. At the time of writ- ing this article, it was rough- ly 10 seconds ago… when she announced the latest update on the spread of COVID-19 through Malta (and now Gozo, for the first time). OK, I know what you're prob- ably thinking right now. It's not exactly a fair comparison, is it? In times of a national health emergency, it is altogether un- derstandable that we would rely on local sources of information to find out what's happening in our own backyard. And besides: it is not the job of the Health Commission to monitor the lo- cal situation in each and every member state… that is clearly the responsibility of the local (as opposed to EU-level) health authorities. Nonetheless, it does raise a small question. What, exactly, is the job of the EU's Health Com- mission at a time like this? Well, according to the Com- mission's website: "The Eu- ropean Commission provides guidance and support meas- ures across the EU […] Once a cross-border health threat is de- clared, as is the case for COV- ID-19, Member States should consult each other within the [Health Security Committee] and in coordination with the European Commission. The goal is to align national respons- es and crisis communication…" And yes, I suppose it does sound all very well and good: until you look at how all the dif- ferent EU countries are actually responding to the crisis, and re- alise that… erm… there doesn't seem to be much evidence of any 'alignment of national re- sponses', does there? Quite the contrary: each indi- vidual member state is clearly adopting whatever measures it feels appropriate, according to its own particular exigencies: i.e., exactly as we all used to do anyway, back in the days before the EU even existed. And this wouldn't even be so worrying, if there was any form of EU-wide consensus on how, effectively, to contain and con- trol a nationwide epidemic. But as each member state an- nounces its own strategy, what emerges is a glaring polarisation of scientific opinion along two diametrically opposed lines: 'social distancing', versus 'herd immunity'. Obviously, what follows has to be regarded as a gross over-sim- plification. But most European countries (Malta included) ap- pear to be following the former model: which aims to minimise the spread of contagion by im- posing strict limitations on so- cial interactivity. The Netherlands, on the other hand, seems to be following the example set previously by the United Kingdom: i.e., the 'herd immunity' approach, which in- volves allowing (even encour- aging) a large percentage of the population to contract the virus, under controlled conditions, in a bid to build up national resist- ance against future resurgences. That, at any rate, is my un- derstanding of these two, wild- ly different approaches… and I won't go into the merits of each for now (because that, quite frankly, is a job better left to each country's individual health authorities). But I suppose you can see where all this is going. It's not exactly an easy decision for any country to take. So… where is all the 'guidance' that the Eu- ropean Health Commission is supposed to be providing? And in what ways have the respons- es of Europe's 27 member states been 'aligned' to any form of common (or, at least, coherent) public health strategy? Only two possibilities appear to be visible at this stage: either there is no real co-ordination effort going on at Commission level right now; or there is, but each member state feels free to simply ignore it at will (note: for what it's worth, I incline towards the second interpreta- tion myself… for reasons which should become obvious later). Either way, it all seems to re- inforce an impression that we already got from our past expe- rience of other crisis situations: the obvious example being im- migration. As Former ALDE chairman Guy Verhofstadt – who is not exactly a Euroscep- tic – put it this week: "It was al- ready clear for a long time that when exceptional circumstanc- es occur, the European Union can be pretty powerless". He also remarked quite bit- terly on the irony that Europe's worst-hit countries actually found more help from outside the EU, than within: "Italy's cry for help, to replenish something as basic as mouth masks, re- mained for weeks unanswered by all other European member states. It was China who rushed to help first…" But there is another level at which the EU simply seems to 'vanish away' whenever there is an urgent, pressing crisis to be dealt with. For it's not just a co- herent, EU-wide health strategy that seems to be totally non-ex- istent at the moment. All the official 'rules and regulations' we've grown accustomed to since joining in 2004 – on State Aid, for instance, or the free movement of people/goods/ capital – have been unceremo- niously jettisoned at the first symptoms of the pandemic. From this perspective, it's been rather amusing to watch Malta's political parties wran- gle over the government's pro- posed measures to counter the economic aspect of the crisis. Robert Abela put together a package amounting to around 1.8 billion (mostly in the form of tax exemptions) to bail out private enterprises; and the so- cial partners reacted by claim- ing that it is far from enough. Employers want government to finance 50% of private sec- tor wages… and the Nationalist Party – i.e., the party that took us into Europe, and behaves for all the world as if it founded the EU itself - seems to be arguing that government should inter- vene at all levels: reducing util- ity bills, pumping money into ailing businesses, etc. Erm… hate to interrupt the party, and all that, but… has it occurred to any of them that most (if not all) their proposals are actually illegal, under the terms of the Accession Treaty we all signed up to in 2004? And that some of them defy not on- ly the EU's regulations on state aid… but also the very princi- ples upon which the EU was founded in the first place? Freedom of movement, for instance. Since when can any EU member state unilaterally decide to close its own borders, even to other EU countries? For that, effectively, is what all those advocating a total lockdown are actually calling for. And it's also what several EU member states are already doing – such as Ger- many, which has closed its fron- tiers with France, Austria and Switzerland; and Spain… which, apart from locking down, has even taken the extraordinary measure of nationalising all its Raphael Vassallo Amazing, how quickly we all forgot about the EU… Where is all the 'guidance' that the European Health Commission is supposed to be providing? And in what ways have the responses of Europe's 27 member states been 'aligned' to any form of common (or, at least, coherent) public health strategy?