The EU’s COVID-19 economic heart attack

Commission issues grim forecast of ‘historic’ recession and cites dire risks of uneven recovery.

 
The EU economy is in a nosedive — a terrifying and unprecedented annual decline of 7.4 percent — according to a new forecast released by the European Commission on Wednesday.

The downturn, set off by the coronavirus pandemic, will brutalize national balance-sheets this year — sending debt and deficit ratios soaring — and then give way to an uneven recovery in 2021 that will threaten the bloc’s single market and the euro area unless national leaders set aside their differences, Economy Commissioner Paolo Gentiloni warned.

As he unveiled the new numbers — a stunning swing of -8.8 percentage points from a November prediction of 1.4 percent growth in 2020 — Gentiloni said at a news conference that he believed leaders could prevent lasting damage to the EU by agreeing on “common tools” for recovery, even as some countries inevitably rebound better than others.

Gentiloni said leaders recognized that unlike in the 2008 financial crisis, all countries were now in peril, and must work together.

“If I look back to two months ago, one month ago, two weeks ago — this awareness was more limited,” Gentiloni said. “Is this only a human solidarity? Well, I am not dismissing human solidarity. Human solidarity is a very important and European sentiment. But I think it is economic awareness.”

 
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Πηγή: politico.eu