Europe fumbled coronavirus at first. Can it manage the pandemic now?

“We need to be pretty honest and say that the initial E.U. response was chaotic and belated,” said Agata Gostynska-Jakubowska of the Centre for European Reform in Brussels.

It was obvious by the end of last year that the virus would come to Europe, she said, but even after it developed in Italy, “member states took center stage while the commission,” the bloc’s executive arm, “and other EU institutions were rather absent, and the harm was done, playing into the hands of euroskeptics.’’