Euobserver.com

The EU commission president scolded EU countries that have introduced export bans, or slowed down border traffic by reinstalling controls. She told member states that the EU is at a turning point.

An open message from the Chinese ambassador to the EU.

"The numbers in the last few days show that we can bend the trend but only if we all do our share," EU Commission president Ursula von der Leyen told MEPs on Thursday. Von der Leyen criticised EU countries that introduced export bans on medical gear and closed borders. "When Europe really needed need to be there for each other, too many initially looked out for themselves," she said.

Microbiology laboratories of Spanish hospitals have warned that much-awaited rapid tests for coronavirus do not work well, El País newspaper reported on Thursday. The Spanish government announced this week that 340,000 of these test kits have arrived from China - with which it was intended to do mass testing. However, the experts concluded that these tests have a sensitivity of 30 percent when it should be higher than 80 percent.

Greenpeace on Thursday called for an EU response to the coronavirus that focussed on saving lives while making society fairer, greener and more resilient to a future crisis, as EU leaders hold a videoconference. "Governments and the EU should not repeat the mistakes of the 2008 financial crisis and hand out cash to big corporate players with no strings attached," warned Greenpeace EU democracy adviser Ariadna Rodrigo.

The World Trade Organisation's chief said on Wednesday that projections show the economic downturn and job losses caused by the coronavirus pandemic would be worse than the 2008 recession, Reuters reports. "This pandemic will inevitably have an enormous impact on the economy," director-general Roberto Azevedo said. "Recent projections predict an economic downturn and job losses that are worse than the global financial crisis a dozen years ago," he added.

Poland has raised doubt on its ability to pay for EU zero carbon-linked investment due to virus crisis costs, its climate ministry told the Reuters news agency. "As a consequence of this crisis our economies will be weaker .... completion of some important energy projects may be delayed or even suspended," the ministry said. "Achievement of our climate goals will be even more difficult because of them," it added.

EU states have just one-tenth of the ventilators, face masks and other equipment they need to fight coronavirus, according to an internal European Commission document seen by the Reuters news agency. "Commission internal estimates show that the 'traditional' supply will only be able to serve ca. 10% of the demand," it said. Waiting times for medical supplies at certain internal EU borders "went beyond 24 hours", the EU document added.

Italy, with the backing of France and Spain, call for substantial EU economic help, others want to see how long the outbreak will last before committing to big plans.

When one day the coronavirus nightmare is over, we should not wake up in an authoritarian state where individual freedoms have dwindled.

A lone judge will read out 16 verdicts in an almost empty chamber in the EU court on Thursday, as Europe tries to uphold rule of law in the pandemic.

Crises, whether terrorism, migration or pandemics, do not mean that "everything goes," experts warn over the measures EU states introduced to fight the coronavirus. Health and democracy should not be seen as a binary choice.

The European Parliament's chief administrator Klaus Welle had set the record straight after a Polish MEP from the European Conservatives and Reformists (ECR) group made false claims on Polish television on infection rates at the Brussels assembly.

The restrictive measures taken by many member states to respond to the coronavirus outbreak make it difficult for EU farmers and fishermen to continue their daily work - which is disrupting the agri-food sector across the continent.

With India now in lockdown, in total three billion people worldwide have to stay at home in order to avoid further spreading of the coronavirus, AFP writes. Governments of countries of all continents have installed some kind of mandatory confinement. Some countries imposed curfews, others compulsory quarantine, while other countries only gave strong recommendations to stay at home. The epicentre of the coronavirus has moved from China to Europe.

Spain's coronavirus death toll has overtaken China's, climbing to 3,434, while the number of cases reach 47,610, the Guardian writes. After more than a week in lockdown, another 738 people died over 24 hours. However, officials expressed hope that the daily rise in deaths might be stabilising. "If we are not already at the peak, we are very close," said Fernando Simón, the head of Spain's health emergency centre.

The new coronavirus is unlikely to disappear in summer, the EU agency for disease control warned on Wednesday - unlike four other coronaviruses are which usually not detected in summer months, Reuters added. The European Centre for Disease Control (ECDC) cited research saying every country in Europe is forecast to run out of intensive care beds by mid-April unless it acts fast, Reuters reported.

Russia's April 22 public vote on a package of constitutional amendments will be postponed until after the coronavirus outbreak is under control, president Vladimir Putin said in a surprise televised address to the nation Wednesday, the Moscow Times writes. One of the amendments, already approved by parliament and the constitutional court, would reset the presidential terms and give Putin the possibility to remain president until 2036.

The EU's €37bn virus crisis fund and its long-term budget should be used to help cut CO2 emissions in line with the EU's so-called Green Deal objectives, Diederik Samsom, the head of cabinet of European Commission vice-president Frans Timmermans told press on Tuesday. "We should ... align everything that we have, including the MFF [budget] into one objective, which is to make the Green Deal happen," Samsom said, Bloomberg reports.

The US could become the new centre of the global coronavirus pandemic, according to the World Health Organisation, which said case numbers were rising quickly there even as US president Donald Trump talked of reopening the country for business, the Guardian reports. "We are now seeing a very large acceleration in cases in the US. So it does have that potential," said Margaret Harris, a WHO spokeswoman.