EU summits are like a regular medical check-up for our union. Expert eyes can immediately see how good its health is. One very good measurement is EU leaders’ ability to decide. The leaders just had their second COVID-19 summit this year. Last year, from March to December, they met (mostly virtually) eight times to discuss the coronavirus and its implications. In a perfect world, after ten such meetings, you would expect that the leaders would have taken the necessary decisions so that the pandemic was contained with minimum restrictions. You would expect that the same rules apply for EU citizens so they don’t have to fight with each other’s bureaucracies, that all of us are equipped with the same COVID-19 app, that borders remain open unless Brussels decides on a temporary closure here or there, that vaccination campaigns are conducted in a uniform way, that an EU communication campaign would tackle anti-vaxxers, and much more. In a perfect world, after 10 such meetings, EU leaders would have founded a European Health Union. In our real world, which is far from perfect, leaders decide as little as possible. If there is one thing most leaders are happy doing together, it is bashing the Commission for not doing enough. But the Commission can only do what it is tasked with. The Commission is a powerful instrument used by leaders at minimum capacity. If Europeans knew more about EU summits, if they could watch them online, they would be probably ashamed of their national leaders. That’s perhaps why summits are held in secret. Leaders later hold national press conferences to distil messages for their audiences, while the Council and the Commission presidents say as little as possible and take fewer and fewer journalistic questions. COVID-19 has had another side-effect. It also seems to have depleted EU leaders of the capacity to look beyond their nose READ MORE |