Shutdown: How Covid Shook the World's Economy

by Adam Tooze

To cut off a nationalist backlash, Merkel needed to make a show of leadership. In Berlin, the case for the deal was strongly argued by the SPD-controlled Finance Ministry, which was determined to avoid sliding back into the trench warfare of the eurozone crisis. Finance Minister Scholz had his own hotline to Paris.30 But if we are looking for a deeper motivation, it derives from Merkel’s appreciation that the coronavirus presented Europe with a new type of challenge, a harbinger of the new era of violent environmental shocks. It was telling that in the pivotal press conference with Macron on May 18, Merkel made the point that Covid was the kind of crisis that demonstrated the obsolescence of the nation-state. “Europe must act together, the nation-state alone has no future.”