Is COVID-19 Killing Democracy?

Pandemic Boosts Support for Europe's Autocrats

Polish Election Antics Show 'Collapse of Democracy'

Czechs Fear Autocratic Contagion

Hungary 'No Longer a Democracy'

The EU acted fast to mitigate the economic impact of the pandemic. The European Central Bank launched exceptional monetary measures, and the EU introduced a recovery and reconstruction package amounting to 1-1.5 trillion euros ($1.1-1.6 trillion).

Differences over how to finance an EU rescue package remain, but the primary objective is straightforward: to achieve a rapid V-shaped recovery, though a slower U-shaped recovery remains a distinct possibility.

Beyond a straightforward economic recovery, however, is the widely shared ambition of building a greener, more digitised European economy. Virtually everyone agrees that the COVID-19 crisis represents an important opportunity to accelerate such a transformation, though the jury is still out on whether the EU will seize it.

The outcome will depend partly on the pandemic's impact on Europe's political institutions. And, so far, there are serious reasons to worry.

From an institutional perspective, the biggest threat comes from Germany's Federal Constitutional Court, which recently ruled that the German government had violated the country's Basic Law by failing to monitor adequately the ECB's public-sector asset purchases.

This ruling is not only remarkably detached from reality — saving the European economy must be the top priority today — but also reflects open contempt for the EU Treaties.

Juridical responsibility for the ECB — including oversight over whether it is overstepping its mandate — belongs to the Court of Justice of the EU, which deemed the ECB's asset purchases legal in...