RYSZARD LEGUTKO. Co-Chairman of the European Conservatives and Reformists Professor of Philosophy at the Jagiellonian University of Krakow, Poland.

Will Europe Resist the Coronavirus Crisis?

Of several consequences that might result from the epidemic, two would perhaps be welcome. The first is a revision of the relations between the EU and the member states. The EU has proved to be structurally unsuited to deal with the crisis, which did not prevent it from reaching for more competences for itself. After the epidemic, the member states might – whether they will, is a different matter – bring the EU to its senses and reduce its uncontrolled hunger for political power. The second is a change in the attitude towards life and death, which in recent decades has been rather frivolous in the entire Western world, and in Europe in particular. The epidemic has brought back to people’s minds the awareness of the fragility of human existence. Whether such a moral reorientation will happen remains to be seen. Unfortunately, as the past crises show, the Europeans not always drew the right conclusions from the disasters that befell them.