Italy ... The Beginning of the End for the EU
Italy, a founding member state of the (now) European Union has the highest death toll in the world from the Coronavirus pandemic.
How on earth could a country in the western world end up worse that China, a communist state with serious human rights violations ?
We'll ....
firstly, Italy has an ageing population with around 1 in 4 Italians being over the age of 60.
Secondly, after the financial crash of 2008, Italy has been one of the most (if not the most affected country) in the whole of Europe, with the ECJ bailing out with debt for over 12 years. It's still going and paying the loans back with interest while the only measure it has control over to make up the shortfall (like all countries in the Eurozone) is to apply massive austerity measures. This has been the case for a lot of countries in the Eurozone (Spain, Portugal, Greece) but Italy, in particular has crippled its national(ised) health service resulting in a devastating lack of beds, protective equipment, ventilators and facilities to cater for the volume of critically ill patients because of the pandemic. Behind the scenes, Doctors are making difficult decisions on who is survivable and who is not because they are so overwhelmed by how quick and how widespread the pandemic is (you won't see this in the MSM though).
Third, there are around 300,000 Chinese workers in Italy, who went home to China to celebrate their new year, and travelled back before the borders were closed, resulting in many infected Chinese infecting the Italian population. Most of these workers work in the textile and leather industries and originate from (you guessed it), Wuhan and the surrounding areas where the epidemic has been so prevalent in China since before the New Year.
Fourth ... When infected, Italy, knowing that an epidemic was inevitable first asked the EU Commission for extra financing to buy the necessary equipment it needed. This was refused, a punishment no doubt for the increase in euroscepicism in Italy, so Brussels push to get Italy under the thumb of EU control agin after it twice threatened to leave the Euro and print its own Lira.
So Italy was left to fend for itself with its own bankrupt economy, going further into decline while the people got sicker and sicker, quicker and quicker.
Five ... Italy decides to take the bull by the horns and starts to bail out its Sicilian leisure industry and by doing so, get's find 7.5 Million Euros by the Commission, firing another warning shot to return the straying sheep back to the fold. Italy knows now, there can be no breaking of the EU rulebook - and these fines were imposed on Italy at the worst time, as the virus problem started to take a real foothold and the economy starting to tank.
Six ... Ursula von der Leyen finally breaks her silence after about 8 weeks of the pandemic emerging, telling the 27 that the "single market must be protected" but, not trying to preserve the trading standards between the 27 (as the media leads us to believe), but to keep the borders open and free movement (despite the objections and please from Italy France and others). My thoughts are that it was a political stance to make sure that the EU Projects open border policy must never be questioned or overturned or people will start to think it was a mistake... (the irony)
Seven ... unity in the EU starts to fall apart as Germany locks down its manufacturing and refuses to sell Italy any ventilators, protective equipment or face masks. Instead, only Germans will benefit from German ventilators, face masks etc, as Merkel abandons one of its longest EU friends and instead turns it's socialist back on them. In return, a recovering China offers a lifeline to Italy, with an offer of millions of facemasks and protective clothing equipment and thousands of respirators ... so now Italy has a new friend while the EU and Germany continue to create division.
Eight ... Weeks after Italy is refused financial support from Brussels, the virus spreads further into France, Spain and all other areas. The pandemic increases as member states put up their own borders and kill the Schengen area.
Nine.... Christine la Garde comes out of hiding after about 10 weeks with a plan to put the final nail in the coffin of sovereignty in the Eurozone.... While sovereign nations have their own centralised banks and treasuries and while they can QE to their hearts content, the debts can be recovered and controlled through interest rate changes that work for that sovereign country, taxation that benefits that sovereign country and tariffs, duties, currency devaluations etc that also benefit that sovereign country.
So here is the kicker. Lagarde announces 750 Billion of rescue funding into the Eurozone (basically) but although the ECB is not sovereign, Brussels is not sovereign, the tarrifs and interest rates are not sovereign, there is one part left that IS. This part is DEBT - each country takes a share of the ECB loan as their own
sovereign debt, to pay back on terms dictated to by Brussels and the ECB, when its paid and how much. As with Hungary, the penalty is removal of voting rights so watch each member state become "regionalises" and marginalised as the EU takes its opportunity to take more control, with a dotted line to China courtesy of the "Belt and Road" Project and another dotted line to Russia with the Nord Stream 2 Project.
Maybe Coronavirus was just a coincidence that was a fortunate opportunity to accelerate the EU Project to it's ultimate conclusion, maybe it was deliberate, we will never know...
One thing is for sure ... all that debt needs to be paid back and all the Eurozone nations (Germany excluded because the Euro is basically the Deutsch Mark in another name) are completely under the commissions (Germanys) control.
Funny that....