Italy\u2019s prime minister on Tuesday declared coronavirus was causing a \u201csocio-economic tsunami\u201d as European leaders agreed to seal off external borders, but many countries thwarted solidarity by imposing frontier curbs of their own.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cThe enemy is the virus and now we have to do our utmost to protect our people and to protect our economies,\u201d European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said after the second video conference in a week of the European Union\u2019s 27 leaders.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cWe are ready to do everything that is required. We will not hesitate to take additional measures as the situation evolves.\u201d Italian Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte, whose country has been hardest hit by a global health crisis now centred in Europe, said no nation would be left untouched by the \u201ctsunami\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Asked about Conte\u2019s proposal, Chancellor Angela Merkel said euro zone finance ministers would continue discussing ways to help their economies cushion the impact, but no decision has been made.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cThese are initial discussions and there have been no decisions by the finance ministers,\u201d said Merkel. \u201cI will talk to Olaf Scholz so that Germany continues to take part . But there are no results regarding this.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The EU has scrambled to find a coherent response to the outbreak, with countries imposing their own border checks in what is normally a zone of control-free travel, limiting exports of medical equipment or failing to share key data swiftly.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The national leaders agreed on Tuesday to close the external borders of most European countries for 30 days and establish fast-track lanes at their countries\u2019 frontiers to keep medicines and food moving.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
France went into lockdown on Tuesday to contain the spread of the highly contagious new coronavirus and Belgium announced it would follow suit, as the death toll in Italy jumped above 2,000, European banks warned of falling incomes and pummelled airlines pleaded for government aid.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The EU\u2019s executive European Commission warned member states that this was just the beginning of the crisis and Germany said it would run for \u201cmonths rather than weeks\u201d, diplomats said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Italy\u2019s prime minister on Tuesday declared coronavirus was causing a \u201csocio-economic tsunami\u201d as European leaders agreed to seal off external borders, but many countries thwarted solidarity by imposing frontier curbs of their own. \u201cThe enemy is the virus and now we have to do our utmost to protect our people and to protect our economies,\u201d […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":81778,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[87],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-81777","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/81777","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=81777"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/81777\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":81779,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/81777\/revisions\/81779"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/81778"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=81777"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=81777"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=81777"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}