Letters

摘要

There is nothing new about differences in national views about the purpose of the European Union, but the pandemic has indeed highlighted these ("On the blink", May 16th). At the same time, this crisis has underlined just how interconnected Europe is in many ways and this is vital to our ability to recover from the huge hit that our economy is taking. There may well be ambiguity about what Europe stands for at the political level, but among businesses there is broad consensus. European business chambers and their 20m firms want a Europe that is based on a fully functioning single market. This is crucial to Europe's prosperity, solidarity and influence in the world. Restrictions introduced at internal EU borders in response to covid-19 impede the movement of goods, services and workers and undermine supply and value chains. These measures were considered necessary in flattening the epidemic's curve, but they must continue to be rolled back if we are also to flatten the curve of the economic crisis.