Vivien A Schmidt
The Covid-19 pandemic has been something of a wake-up call for the European Union. The EU finally recognised that the eurozone economic policies it had been pursuing since the 1990s reinforced at the outset of the eurozone crisis in 2010 had been deleterious to the wellbeing of its citizens and the planet.
The obsession with ‘governing by rules and ruling by numbers’ through the Stability and Growth Pact (SGP), focused on low deficit and debts, meant that the EU had failed to invest in its future. Such rules and numbers ensured that those without the ‘fiscal space’ (read southern Europe) could not invest, while those with the fiscal space (northern Europe)
In addition to the devastating human toll, the economic upheaval wrought by the COVID-19 pandemic illustrates the inextricable relationship between physical and economic health. This column presents an overview of the macroeconomic effects of the infectious disease epidemics of the 20th and early 21st centuries through the lens of recent COVID-19 research and explores the
What happens now to the EU s post-Covid recovery fund?
Last December saw intense negoations among EU leaders on the recovery financing and the long-term EU budget (Photo: Council of the European Union)
Brussels, 5. May, 07:18
The wheels have started to turn in the EU machinery to get the €800bn recovery package - designed to mitigate the economic fallout from the pandemic - rolling.
But it will take time before member states budgets receive the first euros, at the start of the summer at best, almost a year after EU leaders agreed to issue joint debts to finance the continent s recovery.
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The European Union's public debt ceiling of 60% of gross domestic product no longer makes sense and should be revised as the EU reforms its fiscal rules, the head of the euro zone's bailout fund Klaus Regling said on Wednesday.