Economic Consequences of Crisis in Europe

As the deaths and economic damage from Covid-19 continue to rise, Italians are asking why the EU is doing so little to help in their time of need.

The pandemic is reinfecting old wounds in the EU, reopening the divide between the wealthy north and the heavily indebted south. In Italy angry citizens have taken to burning the EU flag in viral YouTube clips (pictured). There are calls for "coronabonds" to finance a rescue package for the hardest hit nations, but Germany and the Netherlands remain reticent.

Business Daily's Manuela Saragosa - herself half-Italian, half-Dutch - asks journalist Antonello Guerrera of Italian newspaper La Repubblica, whether the country could turn its back on Europe. Dutch political economist Jerome Roos of the London School of Economics says the EU's future is at stake. We ask Clemens Fuest of the IFO German economics think tank whether Chancellor Angela Merkel is prepared to make an act of historic European solidarity.

Producer: Laurence Knight