by Claudio Grass, Claudio Grass:

The EU Pandemic Relief Deal

After intense negotiations, long days and nights of clashes and a distinctly sour note underlying the entire summit, European Union leaders finally agreed on an unprecedented 1.82 trillion-euro ($2.1 trillion) budget and COVID recovery package. This agreement provided €750 billion in funding meant to counter the impact of the pandemic, while it also includes €390bn in non-repayable grants to the hardest-hit members, with Italy and Spain being the main recipients.

The harsh negotiations brought to the surface once again the deep economic, structural and cultural divide between North and South. This divide has been at the core of every serious political and economic crisis in the bloc so far and its reemergence served as yet another reminder of how unnatural, forced and unsustainable the integration vision of the Europhiles really is. Their wider strategic aims, much like this COVID relief package itself, are nothing more than a massive redistribution of wealth and a vain effort to impose uniformity on a radically diverse group of national identities, economic profiles and local political realities.