JUDY WOODRUFF: Today, European leaders met virtually to try and answer the same questions
confronting the U.S., when to reopen? And how difficult will the road ahead be?
Here's Nick Schifrin.
NICK SCHIFRIN: Today, European Union leaders agreed to create a massive recovery fund to
try and help economies that have been devastated by COVID-19.
And individual countries are beginning to open up.
In Germany, some schools have started again. In Denmark, hairdressers reopened. And in
Slovakia, you can go to flower shops and bookstores, although there aren't many customers.
But much of the European Union remains closed. And the bloc confronts a fundamental challenge,
as each country decides when to open up and how to keep its citizens safe.
And so, to talk about this, I'm joined by the European Union's ambassador to Washington,
Stavros Lambrinidis.
Ambassador, thank you very much. Welcome to the "NewsHour."
Washington, D.C., and individual states in the U.S. are confronting the same challenge.
How do you coordinate from Brussels when countries open up?
STAVROS LAMBRINIDIS, European Union Ambassador to the United States: Well, it's going to
be a tough decision.
We face the same challenges you do here in some ways. You open -- you relax the measures
too soon, you risk a new wave of infections. You take too long, you risk jobs and you risk
the recovery.
So, what we did in Brussels, we put out guidance to all our 27 member states, indicating the
steps that ought to be taken to make this opening as coordinated as possible.
And it may not surprise to hear that the fundamental things that we have in place is, first of
all, to ensure that there is a significant slowing of the spread, secondly, that the
hospital capacities are adequate, thirdly, that there's enough testing, enough contact
tracing to ensure that, if this were to break out again, it could be very easily and very
quickly contained.
NICK SCHIFRIN: This is a major challenge for the E.U. and the rest of the world, but it's
really a fourth challenge for the E.U. in just the last dozen years or so.
We have had the financial crisis, of course, which led to the Eurozone crisis. We have
had the crisis of migration, of Brexit, and now COVID-19, of course.
Are the ties that keep the E.U. together beginning to fray?
STAVROS LAMBRINIDIS: No.
I say, on the contrary, we have been through a number of crises now, to know that it is
only when we are united as European Union member states that we can overcome them.
It hit different member states at different rates, and we all clamped down and tried to
deal with it individually, and we realized very quickly this wouldn't work.
So then we all jumped in. And we got a collective response by the E.U. that has been, frankly,
remarkable, compared to the other crises you mentioned, not even close. We are providing
measures to support our member states in whatever they're doing now to protect lives.
A classic example of this is that we have collectively, as European Union countries,
procured the PPE equipment that is required. We have also invested in vaccines and treatments
at the European level.
And, of course, we have economic support to the E.U. that has been unseen until up to
now. More than 3.4 trillion euros, which is even more than that in dollars, has already
been committed to fight the immediate effects of the crisis, to support workers, to save
lives.
And, as you said, we just decided to invest massively in a new Marshall Plan, you can
call it, anything you want to, after the crisis.
NICK SCHIFRIN: So, that coordinated response you describe now and today, the E.U. was criticized
early on for being a little behind the curve, for not having that coordinated response,
and specifically Italy, a place that was already skeptical of the E.U.
Approval in the E.U. has dropped 20 percentage points. So, how do you deal with the challenge
of Europeans, especially in the south, questioning the very notion of the E.U., at the same time
that you might have to deal with, for example, a bailout of Italy in the future?
STAVROS LAMBRINIDIS: Well, you have take the right measures in place, but you also have
to speak to people's hearts, not just to their minds.
And we're doing this. The European Commission president, Ursula von der Leyen, came out
openly and apologized to Italy and Spain, in particular for the E.U. being at the beginning
slow on a collective -- in its collective response.
But what you also need to do is what we have done since, which is to have that collective
response. You will see now in Italy that there are other European member states that have
given millions of masks, protective equipment, and everything else that Italy needs.
Doctors are coming into Italy from other countries. You see a collective solidarity, European
solidarity, now in full swing. And maybe you can -- you can accuse Europe for being sometimes
slow off the bat, but you cannot at this stage accuse it of being anything other than a solidarity
superpower that is supporting its member states, and also trying to support other countries
around the world.
NICK SCHIFRIN: And how does the U.S. and E.U. work together, when the U.S. is questioning
multilateral institutions like the World Health Organization?
President Trump, of course, has called the E.U. an economic foe. How do you work together
and create a global response in an era of America first?
STAVROS LAMBRINIDIS: I think that we have a responsibility towards not just our citizens,
but also citizens around the world, as we are coming collectively now to the containment
of this, to support them as well.
The European Union has put together a huge package of 20 billion euro to support other
countries. The U.S. is doing similar things.
We are funding massively the World Health Organization that is at the front lines of
many poor countries around the world, who don't have the health capacity to deal with
a crisis, supporting them.
So, solidarity is not charity. The fact is that it is in our collective interest. This
virus has shown that it's a world virus. So, we have to be very consistent, Americans and
Europeans together, to show that solidarity doesn't stop at our borders, and that we're
out there supporting the world, with -- including with our values, transparency, no strings
attached, making sure that growth can come, that labor rights can be respected, that the
environment will not be destroyed.
All these things are not little things. They're the challenges of the future. And we can be
there together holding hands and making it happen.
NICK SCHIFRIN: Stavros Lambrinidis, E.U. ambassador to the United States, thank you very much.
STAVROS LAMBRINIDIS: Thank you.