Social Europe: Europe’s failure to address Covid-19 shows the need for a European ‘health citizenship’

The way the world is organised has proven to be catastrophic for the management of this epidemic. In Europe, each country has reacted in a different way, perhaps revealing the distinct characters of national elites. Germany has managed to keep death rates low with heavy testing, but other European countries have been far slower to react, while some governments appear to have been less open about the situation they were facing and only reacted when the virus was at their doorstep.

Some countries, such as Austria and Poland, have demonstrated nationalist instincts in their responses by closing down their borders. Meanwhile in Spain, the approach has included the centralisation of healthcare responsibilities following the declaration of a state of emergency, even though the relevant expertise is located at the regional level, and some Spanish regions which advocated for a lock down have remained open.

In contrast, In Italy, the regions of Veneto and Lombardy were early movers in setting up a quarantine and urging locals to stay home. In Lombardy, local health authorities established strong containment measures in the initial cluster by quarantining several towns in an attempt to slow transmission of the virus. In Germany, states have taken the lead in fighting the virus, while in the UK Wales and Scotland have acted first by announcing policy measures such as school closures which were then followed by the whole country. [...]

Today, European citizenship is defined by a common European health card as much as a European passport. However, the European role in managing health crises has remained modest. The Covid-19 crisis highlights that public health (the management of global public risks) is an area where the EU should be more proactive. Given the nationalistic and even selfish policies implemented by various member states, the creation of a European wide public-health authority must now be viewed as an urgent matter to consider as part of wider reforms. Being European should entail having a European health citizenship.

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The Guardian: German summer holiday row exposes north-south divide

Currently the states of Bavaria and Baden-Württemberg are permanently hogging what most believe to be the best school holiday summer slots – between the end of July and the start of September. The other states are locked into a strict rotation system running from June to September.

The system was introduced decades ago to ensure that the country’s infrastructure did not grind to a halt as it might if everyone decided to hit the autobahns, railways and airports at once. The rotation system is also meant to ensure a spread of holidaymakers across the season at hotels and holiday resorts, so that the economic benefit of the Sommerferien-Korridor – or summer holiday corridor – is maximised. [...]

Hamburg has accused the states of egotism and said it will lead the way in deciding in future on its own summer break dates. It is urging other states to follow. Lower Saxony, North Rhine-Westphalia and Berlin have said they are prepared to do the same.

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OZY: Why This German State Says 'Jawohl' to Migrants

For an industrial hub like Baden-Württemberg — home to auto majors Porsche and Mercedes and multinational corporations like Bosch, SAP and BASF — the approach makes sense, says Gari Pavkovic, head of the Department for Integration Policy of Stuttgart. Aging Germany has an estimated shortage of more than a million skilled workers.

These integration moves also coincided with another trend that runs counter to what’s happening elsewhere. While the far-right Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) is rapidly gaining support in several states, from Brandenburg and Saxony to Thuringia, in Baden-Württemberg its popularity is declining. A September poll shows support for the anti-immigrant AfD at 12 percent, down from 15 percent in 2016. As mainstream parties in Germany and beyond struggle to stop the surge of the far-right, Baden-Württemberg is showing that the answer to bridging a divide between migrants and locals might lie not just in politics, but in economics. [...]

With Germany as a whole accepting far fewer refugees than it did in 2015, the numbers entering Baden-Württemberg have declined too. Still, in 2018, the state the size of Maryland accepted 11,000 migrants, mostly from Nigeria, Syria and Turkey — the U.S. plans to admit 18,000 in all, in 2020. Twenty percent of the population has a migrant background in Baden-Württemberg, located in the southwest of the country. In Stuttgart, it’s 50 percent. In comparison, Thuringia in the east counts just over 7 percent of its population as foreign-born. [...]

Deutsche Bahn too will only take trainees with sufficient language skills who have passed a psychological test and possess technical knowledge. They need to prove they graduated from a recognized school. For refugees fleeing a war, these can be tough hurdles. That’s where organizations like Caritas — which also helps refugees navigate bureaucracy, from getting educational qualifications recognized to obtaining a driving license — come in. “There are no limits,” says Lisa Maisch, a team leader of one home that houses 146 people. “We connect them or help them figure out ways to do that.”

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