April 2020. The European Union has scraped through its latest crisis by the skin of its teeth. The past week has been a disgrace. When ministerial talks collapsed on Thursday over the plan for a “coronabond”, the reaction seemed terminal. Germans and Dutch insulted Italians and Spaniards. Italy’s prime minister, Giuseppe Conte, said his country faced an “economic and social emergency”, and the EU appeared not to care. The Danes spoke of “a financial crisis on steroids”. The European commission’s vice-president, Frans Timmermans, predicted “the EU as we know it will not survive this”.