Alone? Like with the 500 billion euro EU emergency fund that was agreed yesterday?
This agreement comes on the heels of the rejection of what 9 Eurozone countries including France had asked initially: A Eurobond, or coronabond as it made some headlines. That would have allowed the EU as an entity to borrow money instead of individual counties, but the governments of Germany and Netherlands seems that were against it.
See it this way: everyone knows Italian debt at 140% of GDP is unsustainable. Successive governments have promised again and again to do something about it, but then each finds a reason not to follow this promise. The Italian state is leaking money in all corners with many politically friendly businesses making huge gains at the cost of taxpayers. The default is mostly inevitable if there is not finally a serious attempt to address this issue.
Successive Italian governments have asked for mutualised debt - while increasing the national deficit and debt further each year. It would be crazy for any other government to give Italy a blank check and say "okay take whatever loans you need, wecll guarantee it". It means you are consciously taking up the risk of default for yourself while having no way to stop overspending or fix the underlying systemic issues. This means Italian governments have even less incentive to change the horribly corrupt and broken system.
That other countries say no is not a decision against the Italian citizens. It would be irresponsible towards their own citizens to take this up without some kind of real guarantee that Italy will finally fix the systemic issues, because the past 20 years of promises have been broken.
But the problem is that unless this happens on European level, providing loans to economies that for whatever reason have not yet recovered from the crisis of 2010 is only going to make things worse for them. Putting more austerity on these countries provides the perfect ground for movements in favor of Italexit and Grexit. If that happens won't it affect the Eurozone as a whole and, by extensions, the economies of the surplas countries?
In other words, can we afford not to deal with it at a European level?
In my understanding there is only a blunt no to the coronabond, not a request fro more condition.
It was unfortunate that it started with Italy, and been the first with an outbreak like that in Europe push them to take brave decisions.
To me it feels more like that these countries don't want to help because they feel it's Italy's fault and they need to pay.
But what about all the money that was given for free to Germany to rebuild after the second war war, despite a long history of aggression?
It's not a surprise that people wants to break the EU, it's sad to see this project heading this way.