Fine analisi sulla situazione in Europa nella rassegna "The Guardian - This is Europe" 04/11/2020 primo pomeriggio

When Europe became the global epicentre of the pandemic in March, shocked populations rallied around their governments, uniting behind lockdown as a necessary collective sacrifice. Now as hospital admission rates spike again, the public mood is very different. There's been violence in Naples, looting in Milan and Turin and demonstrations across Spain. Even in Berlin, people have taken to the streets. This second wave backlash isn't all the work of libertarians and anti-maskers. The economic and psychological hardship wrought by the pandemic is again exposing inequalities and fuelling justified political anger about the slow pace or absence of financial support.

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This is the tense and polarising context in which European governments are having to raise terror alerts after the outrage in Vienna and attacks in Nice and Lyon. President Macron has been on a collision course with leaders of some Muslim countries after reacting to the decapitation of French school teacher Samuel Paty with comments about Islamist extremism, French 'values' and free speech. Now France is mulling the dispatch of a special envoy to explain Macron's thinking. Will this be enough to damp down a clash which both populists (including Turkey's President Erdogan) and far-right Islamophobic elements across Europe, are only too happy to crank up?

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'The American people have spoken,' EU foreign affairs chief Josep Borrell helpfully informed us this morning. The uncertainty that the American people's 50-50 verdict now threatens is exactly what EU leaders were dreading. It is another reminder that whoever ends up in the White House, the era of relying on the US to provide benign or even consistent global leadership, is over.