President Trump has played a “weak” role in the trans-Atlantic response to the coronavirus pandemic, according to the European Union’s top diplomat.
“Too weak,” EU High Representative Josep Borrell said of the United States during a videoconference with members of the European Parliament. “Maybe because they were not at all prepared to face this problem, and now, they are suffering the consequences as much as some European countries have done.”
Borrell, a former Spanish official, offered that blunt criticism despite past warnings that Western allies need to fight China’s attempt to win a “global battle of narratives” about the pandemic. Yet he took aim at Trump’s hostility for the World Health Organization and faulted American leaders for failing to take a “cooperative” approach to the problem.
“Blaming China, as I said, is not a solution,” Borrell said Monday, while acknowledging that such recriminations might be appropriate “in the future,” when the time comes to learn “how to prevent another crisis.” Trump and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo have lashed China repeatedly for punishing the Chinese doctors who tried to report that a serious infectious disease had emerged in Wuhan. WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus has emerged as another target of American anger given his amplification of Chinese claims about the coronavirus and his support for Beijing’s campaign to discourage countries from restricting travel from China in the early days of the outbreak.
“The WHO’s reliance on China’s disclosures likely caused a twentyfold increase in cases worldwide, and it may be much more than that,” Trump said last week when announcing a freeze in U.S. financial support for the organization.
Borrell also panned the freeze in American aid, suggesting that it is a counterproductive step to take in the midst of a public health crisis.
“This is not the time to blame,” he said. “When the problem will be solved, then we have to make a review about how things have gone. I think that the decision of withdrawing the financial support to the World Health Organization at that precise moment is not a good way of fighting against pandemia.”
Borrell also defended Tedros. “For sure, the World Health Organization can be criticized, but I don’t think the criticism should be presenting the head of the World Health Organization as a kind of a Chinese agent,” he said. “I think this is not the way of dealing with the problems that a big international organization as the WHO may have.”
