From the Centre for European Reform, this is the CER podcast.

It is a critical moment.

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The wind is back in Europe's sex.

We have now a window of opportunity, but it will not stay open forever.

Hello and welcome to the latest podcast from the Centre for European Reform. I'm Ian Bond and I'm speaking today to Luigi Scatzieri and Agatha Gostinska Jakobovska. We're all in different places. So hopefully the technology will work and we will be able to get through this podcast.

And we're going to be talking today about various aspects of the coronavirus pandemic and the resultant economic and political impact on Europe.

And perhaps Luigi, I could start with you.

We first started hearing about the coronavirus COVID-19 a couple of months ago.

And initially, I suppose, reactions were more or less national and uncoordinated.

But from your perspective, what did the EU do initially and how did the EU respond to the unfolding crisis?

Well, thank you, Ian. I think we can level two to criticism at the EU if we wanted to. The first is that its response to the

crisis in Italy, which was the hardest hit amongst member states, was somewhat bungled. So in late

February, Italy appealed for assistance, activating the EU's civil protection mechanism to obtain essential

medical equipment.

The commission activated this mechanism, but no member state actually answered the call,

and initially many member states actually banned the export of medical equipment altogether.

And at the same time, you had remarks by Christine Lagarde

that the job of the European Central Bank was not to reduce the spread between the borrowing

costs of countries like Italy or countries like Germany. And as a result, we saw a large

increase in the borrowing cost of the Italian government and an outcry in Italy,

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