FRANKFURT – Germany’s Foreign Minister Heiko Maas wrote in an opinion article that when Germany takes over as Germany’s rotating council president in the second half of this year, an outbreak of coronavirus will dominate the EU’s agenda.

Mass has been outspoken about the global handling of the crisis, criticizing the US slowing down and China being authoritarian. The epidemic has spread to 214 countries, with 1.6 million diseases and 106,000 deaths.

“We will make it a ‘Crown Presidency’ to defeat Corona and its outcomes,” he wrote in a piece distributed in the Die Welt paper on Sunday. Germany assumed the chair from Croatia on 1 July.

A gradual and coordinated reduction in the order of travel, he wrote, would be one of the “first tasks we once had to come out of the wilderness”.

He said lessons would also have to be taken from the crisis, such as improving EU civil security and joint procurement and production of medical supplies.

The crisis also needs to “correct the mistakes“, he wrote, pointing to restrictions on democracy and the rule of law, “under the guise of fighting wars, which are unacceptable in Europe”.