Macron Suspicious Of China's Coronavirus Success

French President Emmanuel Macron has suggested that differences in the amount of access to information in Europe and China had put into question Beijing's real success in containing the coronavirus outbreak

MOSCOW (UrduPoint News / Sputnik - 17th April, 2020) French President Emmanuel Macron has suggested that differences in the amount of access to information in Europe and China had put into question Beijing's real success in containing the coronavirus outbreak.

Asked by the Financial Times daily if Europe's patchwork response to the pandemic had exposed the EU's weakness, Macron suggested that "there are clearly things that have happened [in China] that we don't know about."

"Given these differences, the choices made and what China is today, which I respect, let's not be so naive as to say it's been much better at handling this," he was quoted as saying in an interview out Thursday.

He said further that giving up core freedoms to respond to the pandemic would be unacceptable for Europe, although some EU member states had made that choice.

"We can't accept that. You can't abandon your fundamental DNA on the grounds that there is a health crisis," the French president argued.

He warned the European Union that its single Currency area and the entire bloc could unravel unless the North and the South agreed to mutualize debt to help the worst-hit economies cope with the strain of the epidemic.