The EU’s top scientist no longer supports the EU
Professor Mauro Ferrari has resigned in protest at the EU’s response to the Covid-19 crisis.
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The president of the European Research Council (ERC) – the European Union’s flagship scientific institution – resigned yesterday in protest at the EU’s handling of the coronavirus crisis.
EU science chief resigns with blast at coronavirus response https://t.co/nsG4EkSysZ
— Financial Times (@FT) April 7, 2020
Professor Mauro Ferrari said the EU’s response was so poor that it had shaken his faith in the EU itself.
In a statement to the Financial Times, Ferrari said he had ‘arrived at the ERC a fervent supporter of the EU [but] the Covid-19 crisis completely changed my views’.
‘I am afraid that I have seen enough of both the governance of science and the political operations at the European Union… I have lost faith in the system itself’, he continued.
Ferrari is not the only prominent pro-EU figure whose faith in the EU has been shaken by the coronavirus crisis.
The former Greek finance minister Yanis Varoufakis was once one of the staunchest advocates of a ‘Remain and Reform’ agenda. But last week he conceded that ‘the British did the right thing’ in voting for Brexit: ‘I don’t think the EU is capable of doing anything to us other than harm.’
The EU is falling apart at the seams. The main argument for an organisation like the EU is that it can respond more adeptly to international challenges. Instead, as spiked has argued, the EU has at best been an irrelevance, and at worst a hindrance to national governments.
Let’s hope more Europeans wake up to the EU’s failings.
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