It sounds like the EU has been struck a horrible blow by the pandemic:

EU and COVID-19: When a vaccine only adds to the trouble

COVID-19 has wrought division in the European Union

BRUSSELS -- European Union leaders no longer meet around a common oval summit table to broker their famed compromises. Instead, each of the 27 watches the other heads of state or government with suspicion via a video screen that shows a mosaic of faraway capitals.

This is what COVID-19 has wrought.

Lofty hopes that the crisis would encourage a new and tighter bloc to face a common challenge have given way to the reality of division: The pandemic has set member nation against member nation, and many capitals against the EU itself, as symbolized by the disjointed, virtual meetings the leaders now hold.

Leaders fight over everything from virus passports to push tourism to the conditions for receiving pandemic aid. Perhaps worse, some attack the very structures the EU built to deal with the pandemic. Last month, Austrian Chancellor Sebastian Kurz decried how vaccine-buying in the bloc had become a “bazaar,” alleging poorer countries struck out while the rich thrived.

"Internal political cohesion and respect for European values continue to be challenged in different corners of the Union," the European Policy Center said in a study one year after the pandemic swept from China and engulfed Europe. . . .