Throughout Europe, the COVID-19 pandemic has taken its toll, with devastating infection and death rates, economic crisis, psychologic consequences of isolation and existential anxiety. Governments throughout Europe are struggling to develop sustainable strategies for crisis management, leave alone coming towards a common European approach. Scientists throughout Europe have now signed a petition to urge European governments to agree on clear goals, define common actions and coordinate their efforts in fighting the pandemic.

The petition was initiated by physicist Viola Priesemann from Max Planck Institute for Dynamics and Self-Organization in Göttingen, and has now been published by the renowned journal The Lancet. “We really hope this to be a wake-up call”, says IBC2 Director Ivan Đikić, who is together with IBC2 Group Leader Christian Münch amongst the signatories. “It is very sad to see how fast the European idea of unity starts to fall apart in the face of crisis.” Besides their scientific contributions to better understand the molecular mechanisms underlying corona infection, both Münch and Đikić have also been publicly engaged in fighting the pandemic, Đikić especially in his homeland Croatia where numbers have lately been dramatically rising.