More than 400 intellectuals from all over Europe published, on 14 March, an appeal to be signed by all citizens (http://www.cesue.eu/en/appeal.html ) calling for a European response to the threat posed by the coronavirus.
"We call on the European Commission and Parliament to propose, and on national governments to adopt, the following urgent measures, using the Lisbon Treaty ‘passerelle’ clause": - make public health and the fight against epidemics a shared competence of the Union, subject to the ordinary legislative procedure, and provide the Commission with extraordinary powers to coordinate the response to the epidemics, as a federal government should do; - enlarge the scope of the European Stability Mechanism (ESM) to finance the immediate strengthening of European and national health systems; - abolish the compulsory balanced budget provision for the Union and create a 'EU Safe Asset'; - move fiscal issues to the ordinary legislative procedure and provide the EU with fiscal powers to adopt new own resources (carbon, digital and financial transaction taxes); - approve the next Multiannual Financial Framework (MFF) increasing the budget to at least 1,3% of the EU Gross Domestic Product (GDP). The Conference on the future of Europe should be turned into a fully-fledged 'European Convention' to draft a new 'Constitutional Pact' among the EU citizens and Member States. (Original version in French by Lionel Changeur)