(CN) — French President Emmanuel Macron is wondering if the era of globalization is over. In Italy, fears are rising that the coronavirus pandemic and the economic anguish it's causing will give new life to the mafia. In the United Kingdom, Brits are furiously debating why so many of their compatriots are dying while an old rival, Germany, can confidently talk about having its outbreak under control.
Undaunted by the crisis, the U.K. government says the pandemic will not delay its departure from the European Union. Meanwhile, far to the east, the number of infected people is rising dangerously fast in Russia.
The dead, meanwhile, keep mounting across the continent: Europe is on pace to reach 100,000 deaths by the end of the weekend. On Friday, official tallies in Europe had recorded more than 94,000 fatalities linked to Covid-19, the respiratory disease caused by the novel coronavirus.
This is the troubling snapshot of a fractured and deeply wounded Europe nearly two months after Italy discovered — to the world's shock — that the deadly coronavirus had taken root in and around Milan, the country's financial capital.
The mood of uncertainty — and a growing sense the world has been permanently upended — hanging over Europe permeated a wide-ranging interview Macron gave to the Financial Times newspaper. The interview was published on Thursday.
“I don’t know if we are at the beginning or the middle of this crisis – no one knows,” he said. “There is lots of uncertainty and that should make us very humble.”
The 42-year-old liberal French president, whom many see as the guiding light of European politics, worried that the EU will be hijacked by populist nationalist politicians feeding off anger over Europe's failures to handle the pandemic. Many politicians, especially on the far right, are eager to see the trans-European project fail and unravel. They view it as imposing rules and regulations that hurt national economies and cultures.
Macron pointed his finger at China for covering up the severity of its coronavirus outbreak and said the pandemic proves Europe needs to become less reliant on China. He called on Germany and the Netherlands, Europe's richer countries, to help hard-hit southern countries like Italy and Spain or watch Europe become even more fractured. He said the age of globalization may be ending.
“It will change the nature of globalization, with which we have lived for the past 40 years,” the French president said. “We had the impression there were no more borders. It was all about faster and faster circulation and accumulation.”
The president credited globalization with bringing down the Berlin Wall and helping lift hundreds of millions of people out of poverty. Macron, who once worked as a Rothschild investment banker, said this global system has become “hyper-financialized.”
“Particularly in recent years it increased inequalities in developed countries,” he said. “And it was clear that this kind of globalization was reaching the end of its cycle, it was undermining democracy.”
He mused: “We all face the profound need to invent something new, because that is all we can do.”
France, meanwhile, reported another devastating death toll on Friday: 761 new deaths to bring its total to 18,681.
Across the English Channel, the United Kingdom reported its own staggering toll on Friday: 847 new deaths in hospitals, raising its death count to 14,676. For several days, the U.K. has reported the highest daily death tolls in Europe and this has left many Brits furious at their government's handling of the pandemic. British Prime Minister Boris Johnson delayed imposing a lockdown and after the outbreak worsened the U.K. found itself with shortages of protective equipment ventilators and tests. On Friday, British media reported that medical staff were going to run out of protective gowns over the weekend.