These steps are dramatic, and have caused significant uncertainty and growing panic across Italy. They are also quite confusing, and how they’ll even be enforced remains unclear. They came to light in an atmosphere of total chaos, after a draft bill outlining the measures was leaked to the press yesterday evening. The proposal suggested that northern Italy would be on total lockdown, and so thousands of people rushed to hop on overcrowded trains heading south. Finally, at 2 a.m. local time, Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte gave a press conference, clarifying that Lombardy and the other provinces wouldn’t seal their borders, just that citizens would be “obligated” to practice “reduced mobility” and could leave only for emergencies.

What, Italians wondered, does that mean? Who will enforce these new rules? And will they even work?

Italy has long been a political laboratory, for better or worse, and a harbinger of developments that later spread. It’s also a rule-bound country where rules are often ignored, a place that often falls short on long-term planning but rises to the occasion in emergencies and has a knack for improvisation that its northern neighbors lack. It is a free society in which information is often unreliable and politicized. Today, it is an experiment in which free movement of people and goods meets free movement of a deadly virus. Countries across Europe and the world are watching how Italy handles an epidemic that knows no borders, has been putting tremendous strain on public-health structures, and is pushing the country’s already fragile economy to the brink. Lombardy alone is responsible for more than 20 percent of national gross domestic product, and tourism is one of Italy’s most important sectors.

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The European debt crisis revealed the flaws in a bloc that shares a currency but not a fiscal policy. The migration crisis of 2015 revealed that individual European countries want to protect their own borders and control the number of immigrants arriving, in a zone built on the ideal of visa-free travel and burden sharing. The coronavirus could pose an even greater test for the European Union, which has free movement of people but no standard health protocols across countries. Will the EU’s member states band together to work with Italy, or will they cordon it off? Will richer northern-European countries hoard medical equipment, or partner with poorer southern- and eastern-European ones to slow the outbreak? Is Italy overreacting, or is the rest of the continent underreacting?

Each European country is handling things in its own way. Italy has a fragile coalition government and strong regions, and its response has been rapid, if chaotic. Germany, which has 939 cases and so far no reported deaths, has a highly federal structure, in which regions have a lot of autonomy in handling crises of this type. As of this weekend, Germany was still holding soccer matches with tens of thousands of fans—to the distress of some German doctors, who feel the country isn’t taking the threat seriously—though its health minister has urged organizers of events with more than 1,000 attendees to cancel them. He has said he was more concerned about panic stemming from the virus than the virus itself.