Former populist French MP Marion Maréchal has slammed the European Union’s response to the coronavirus outbreak, saying the health crisis has shattered the bloc’s notion of solidarity.
The former populist politician and niece of National Rally leader Marine Le Pen slammed the political bloc in an opinion article for news website Atlantico over the weekend writing: “How many financial, economic, health, and migratory shocks will it still take for our leaders to finally understand that this European ‘union’ is a masquerade?”
“China came to the aid of Italy before France and meanwhile, government spokesman Sibeth Ndiaye was giving lessons to the Italians. Angela Merkel no longer even pretends to play collectively and has not once uttered the word ‘Europe’ in the speech addressed to her fellow citizens,” she added.
Maréchal went on to note the successes which countries like Japan and South Korea have had in containing the coronavirus and said: “Faced with the shortcomings of the EU, countries like Italy and Serbia are turning to China, which today has the production capacities that we have given up.”
“We are paying for decades of political choices that have sacrificed national power and sovereignty on the altar of a welfare state ruined by immigration, a bloated administration, and the dogmas of the European Union,” she noted.
France, along with several other European countries, has seen a massive surge in coronavirus cases in the last weeks and as of Monday recorded nearly 20,000 confirmed cases and 860 fatalities.
French President Emmanuel Macron ordered a 15-day lockdown of the country last week and declaring the situation a “health war”.
While many of France’s streets have been emptied of people, some areas of the country, such as the no-go suburbs of Paris, have seen record numbers of fines since the lockdown was initiated.
Police in the Seine-Saint-Denis area, which has a huge illegal migrant population, told media that they felt overwhelmed by the lockdown efforts and one officer remarked that it could be impossible to fully enforce the quarantine measures.