They have very good control of their borders and the (medical) resources to act in case of trouble. Not only that but I think they have learned a few lessons after the 2002-2004 SARS outbreak.

Anecdotal, but while in Hong Kong (2014) there were a few things that stood out:

- they had thermal screening for ALL passengers - while walking towards customs an agent asked me to take my hat off and pointed to the thermal cameras. In contrast, at Bucharest's airport they were set up 3 weeks ago. As of 2019, there were 1.2M Romanian citizens living in Italy, about 600k in the northern part.

- banners against spitting in the trash bin - coming with a big fine. More generally speaking, a general state of cleanliness which can't be found in many EU capitals.

- no toilets in the subway - might be sources of contamination. And when you finally found a public toilet, they were as clean as they can be.

I think there are better odds of finding a cure fast than for Europe to contain this. Note, the evening before the Milan area lockdown people were rushing to the train stations - Schenghen area is borderless.