European (Dis)Union: Shame on Them!

By Shlomo Maital

    Italy is desperate. With more COVID-19 cases and deaths than China, it is now ‘triaging’ (selecting) those who get medical care and not treating those 60 years old and over. Don’t blame them – they have to, they lack medical equipment and doctors and hospital beds and ventilators.

   Wait. Italy is part of the “European Union”, a union of 27 nations banding together to help one another and support one another.

   Right?

   Apparently, wrong.   The nation coming to Italy’s rescue is not the other 26 EU nations, but Russia, which has sent medical supplies and personnel.

   (And by the way, United States? Which used to help other nations? Not in the age of Trump… America First!)

   Slovakia’s leader noted that his desperate requests for help from the EU were turned down cold. But China did come to the rescue, and it is China which is now sending medical aid to other nations. The press claims it is done to restore China’s image, badly damaged by the fact that COVID-19 originated in China. Maybe, too, it is done because China simply gets it.

   European Union? It was not Brexit and Britain that has damaged European union, but the Europeans themselves. Whatever happens in this crisis, Europe will not be the same. If nations in a union do not help one another in time of need, then there is no union.

   Shame on you, Europe.  I can’t believe that none of the other 26 EU nations can spare any medical supplies or equipment, at all.  Nor is there a single EU person in charge of EU overall policy. 

It will be very hard for the Europeans to put Humpty together again, after pushing him off the wall and not even offering a bandage.