COVID-19: A huge crash test for the EU's cohesion
For another time the European Union (EU) is faced with a huge crisis. The coronavirus pandemic unveils the lack of sincere transnational solidarity between the member-states and highlights the need for a concrete policy plan that could provide successful answers to the financial and social consequences of the pandemic.
The EU governments are called to make more expenses than initially planned. We are already witnessing the loss of hundreds of thousands of jobs while job insecurity deepens and poverty rate is expected to increase in the coming months. Without generous public spending and long-term borrowing, without a prolonged loosening of the requirements of the Stability and Growth Pact we could not expect EU to stand firm and come back to growth path.
EU leaderships do not seem well prepared to deal with the ongoing crisis. The lessons of the past have not been absorbed properly, and many EU leaders are taking hasty, short-sighted measures. In Brussels and other capitals there are already thoughts on what austerity measures should be imposed in the aftermath of the crisis and how fiscal loosening will be handled. Resorting to austerity could only trigger a vicious recession circle and further damage EU economies. We know very well how the story goes, and especially for the weaker economies such a backward step could be lethal to their social and economic cohesion. Austerity has been proven disastrous and unsuccessful.
So far, the coronavirus pandemic is treated with the same obsolete policy tools of the past. Few are the EU leaders that have interpreted correctly the complexity of the current crisis, its complicated dimensions and the challenges ahead. We need new tools, new policies that could assist in the making of a new socio-economic model. The deep ruins of the current model provide a unique opportunity to those social and political forces that think and act out of the box to build a new reality that could overcome the limits of the present stagnation.
To that end, the EU has to adjust itself to the new challenges and understand what it is at stake, what should be done to preserve and strengthen the damage that has been made into EU's cohesion and solidarity policies. If this opportunity is missed, EU might well enter into a new systemic crisis that could damage its institutional capacity, the quality of its democracy, its responsiveness rate to new collective demands, the gap of inequalities between the European South and North. All these challenges demand bold and progressive decision-making. It lies on the European leaders to grasp this opportunity.
* By Dimitris Rapidis, founder of Bridging Europe
4.4.2020
The EU governments are called to make more expenses than initially planned. We are already witnessing the loss of hundreds of thousands of jobs while job insecurity deepens and poverty rate is expected to increase in the coming months. Without generous public spending and long-term borrowing, without a prolonged loosening of the requirements of the Stability and Growth Pact we could not expect EU to stand firm and come back to growth path.
EU leaderships do not seem well prepared to deal with the ongoing crisis. The lessons of the past have not been absorbed properly, and many EU leaders are taking hasty, short-sighted measures. In Brussels and other capitals there are already thoughts on what austerity measures should be imposed in the aftermath of the crisis and how fiscal loosening will be handled. Resorting to austerity could only trigger a vicious recession circle and further damage EU economies. We know very well how the story goes, and especially for the weaker economies such a backward step could be lethal to their social and economic cohesion. Austerity has been proven disastrous and unsuccessful.
So far, the coronavirus pandemic is treated with the same obsolete policy tools of the past. Few are the EU leaders that have interpreted correctly the complexity of the current crisis, its complicated dimensions and the challenges ahead. We need new tools, new policies that could assist in the making of a new socio-economic model. The deep ruins of the current model provide a unique opportunity to those social and political forces that think and act out of the box to build a new reality that could overcome the limits of the present stagnation.
To that end, the EU has to adjust itself to the new challenges and understand what it is at stake, what should be done to preserve and strengthen the damage that has been made into EU's cohesion and solidarity policies. If this opportunity is missed, EU might well enter into a new systemic crisis that could damage its institutional capacity, the quality of its democracy, its responsiveness rate to new collective demands, the gap of inequalities between the European South and North. All these challenges demand bold and progressive decision-making. It lies on the European leaders to grasp this opportunity.
* By Dimitris Rapidis, founder of Bridging Europe
4.4.2020