The impressive speed of the dissemination of the virus from China to the rest of the world has shown how interdependent is the world we live in. No country, no great region of the world can win the battle against the virus alone. In the globalized world the destiny of humankind is indivisible.

We knew it. Epidemics are events that have the deepest impact over the course of human history. They are an aspect of natural selection underway since the origin of life on our planet. But governments have not drawn a lesson from the experience of the past. They have been caught by surprise , unaware and unprepared and reacted late and divided to the attack of the virus. No prevention plan was in place. Hospital structures have been found insufficient to face the challenge of pandemic whose costs are no doubt astronomical in terms of loss of human lives. But the unprecedented severity of the current crisis lies in the combination of the health crisis with the economic one.

The fear to generate panic in the public opinion as a result of the lock-down and the suspension of economic activities has refrained governments from taking action. They have resorted to borders closure: a useless provision, adopted when the contagion had already spread worldwide. Instead, a timely intervention would have preserved hundreds of thousands lives. The only result they have obtained has been the strengthening of national cohesion. The decisive event which pushed governments to act in the interest of public health through the restriction of the free movement of persons has been the market crash. A confirmation of the weight of markets in the decision making process of governments.

The first lesson we have learnt by the crisis is that health is a public good whose provision and management cannot be entrusted to market mechanisms. The neo-liberal principles which have led the first phase of globalization have been a resumption of the ideology of the minimal state which dates back to the origin of liberal democratic thinking and confined itself to protect life, liberty and property (Locke) or life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness (Jefferson). The historical experience of the XIX and XX centuries has taught us that healthcare is a sector of social life where markets fail to provide the public goods that only public powers can ensure, such as the protection of the environment, prevention of abuses of dominant positions in the market, regional and social imbalances, public works and so forth. Therefore, the trend to cut healthcare budgets should be stopped and inverted.

The second lesson is that the pandemic has produced a symmetric shock in the global economy with similar consequences on all countries and a recession of historic proportions. Its impact is horizontal. It affects equally emerging and developed economies. Pestilences, like wars, are great equalizers. Therefore, a global coordinated response is necessary.

The third lesson is the re-evaluation of the role of scientists, discredited by populism which has classified them in the negative pantheon of the elites. Even though the coronavirus is a new pathogenic germ, which has found scientists unarmed – they have neither specific drugs nor vaccines –, people's trust in science lies in the fact that it elaborates a shared knowledge built on the basis of experiments and evidences, which are the objective criteria of truth. From it we have learnt that the coronavirus comes from the animal world. It is the ever more intense exploitation of planetary resources – deforestation, desertification, urbanization, overpopulation and livestock farming – that created opportunities for the microorganisms to come closer to human population. Genetic mutations allow the viruses to jump from a species to another and infect humans. The explanation of the origin of coronavirus shows that the pandemic is only an aspect of the environmental crisis. Thus, both emergencies should be addressed together.

The fourth lesson is that the emergency powers granted to governments to combat the pandemic could become permanent constitutional changes. It is to be feared that the exit from the pandemic will give us back citizens available to surrender their freedom and their privacy in exchange for security, and to concentrate powers in few hands. It is simply a fear for an authoritarian drift for the moment. But the decision of the Hungarian Parliament to suspend constitutional freedoms and grant full powers to Orban is an alarming signal of this trend. In fact, according to the Freedom House Institute, Hungary is the first EU member state to leave the club of democracies. Therefore, the emergency powers granted to governments should be submitted to parliamentary control and have a temporary character.

The response of the EU to the emergency of the coronavirus pandemic marks an awakening of European solidarity. The European Council, paralysed by cross vetoes and unable to decide, has entrusted the European Commission with the task to elaborate a recovery plan. This means that the coronavirus crisis has triggered off two potentially revolutionary facts:

- The Recovery Fund, now renamed Next Generation EU, that the Commission will submit to the European Council and the European Parliament for approval, entails a joint issuance of European debt, which will be paid back with money raised through European taxes (web tax, carbon tax, corporate tax); the investment plan necessary to get out of the crisis will require an unprecedented amount of EU budget resources that can reach the figure of EUR 2400 billion; therefore, from now on, the budgetary powers will be shared between member states and the EU, as it is the case in all federations;

-The shift of the EU decision-making power from the European Council to the European Commission, which is beginning to act as a true federal government.

The European Commission President, Ursula von der Leyen, in her intervention at the European Parliament has evoked the precedent of the Marshall Plan, which mobilized an enormous amount of money for the recovery of Europe following the devastation of WWII. And has quoted the authors of the Ventotene Manifesto, Altiero Spinelli and Ernesto Rossi, who in 1941 invited European citizens “to be ready for the new world that is coming, that will be so different from what we have imagined”.

Jean Monnet said: “Europe will be forged in crises and will be the sum of the solutions adopted for those crises”. The coronavirus pandemic confirms this statement, since it offers an opportunity to move towards an increase of the European budget’s own resources never seen before, practically doubling its investment capacity. The creation of a common debt and a EU fiscal power is a milestone of the same importance as the monetary union, that can provide the impetus for a stronger and more united Europe.

Several political observers have defined the current EU's situation as a “Hamiltonian moment”. It is appropriate to compare the European Commission's initiative to the economic policy of Alexander Hamilton, the first Treasury Secretary of the United States, who was the architect of the creation of a common debt of the various member states, the national bank and an ambitious investment plan for the industrialization of North America. Just as Hamilton was the prophet of the industrial revolution in the United States, von der Leyen is the promoter of the environmental and digital revolutions in Europe. The difference lies in the fact that Hamilton's plan was formulated after the ratification of the Constitution, while today's Europe is not a full-fledged Federation. The goal of Hamilton's economic policy was the strengthening of the federal union through the construction of consent around the new institutions.

The core of the problem the EU is facing these days is the same. Success is not guaranteed at all. The European Commission in alliance with the European Parliament will have to win a challenging arms wrestling with the European Council and all the political forces of national conservatism. The recovery plan is the way to associate the citizens and the economic and social interests to the European institutions. The attainment of the no return point in the European unification process does not lie in the formal transfer of this or that competence from the member states to the Union, nor in this or that change in the architecture of the European institutions, but rather in the strengthening of the support of the people, civil society and economic interests to the EU.

The recovery of the European economy can pave the way to the strengthening and democratization of the EU's powers in the sector of public health, and can lead to the creation of a European Health Community, an example for what the other great regions of the world should do, and for a global health policy aiming to reform, strengthen and democratize the World Health Organization. The WHO should become the coordinating and propulsive core of an effective global response to the challenge of pandemics in terms of capacity to alert member states to the threats to public health and to disseminate reliable information, of coordination and promotion of research for discovery of vaccines and drugs, and of distribution of healthcare equipment. To carry out these tasks, it should receive more financial resources and its powers should be strengthened and democratized. Moreover, in order to enhance its freedom of initiative from national governments, it should be endowed with the same degree of autonomy enjoyed by Central Banks.