This article aims to examine the initial responses and the development of regional policies towards COVID-19 of the two most successful examples of regional organisations: the EU and the ASEAN.
Without limits, allowing a government to finance itself by creating money can lead to hyperinflation. But these risks can be manageable: the quantitative easing of the past decade, despite predictions, has not lifted inflation above the main central banks’ 2 per cent targets.
The European Central Bank has ditched a cap on how many bonds it can buy from any single euro zone country, clearing the way for potentially unlimited money-printing as it scales up its response to the coronavirus outbreak.
Experts from across Europe and the United States react to China’s growing coronavirus outreach in Europe and the implications for Chinese-EU relations.
The union cooperates well in non-crisis situations, but its complacency, lumbering bureaucracy, and sluggish decision-making processes hamper its ability to respond to urgent developments.
They could have known. They should have prepared. They didn’t listen. It is a crisis with no end in sight. And it is one that Europe’s top leaders failed to see coming.
The prevailing wisdom holds that the Covid-19 pandemic could "break the EU", lead to the renationalisation of competencies, and create an inward looking continent devoid of solidarity. Yet this temporary trauma belies the tremendous opportunity emerging to create a more integrated and cohesive European Union.
The era of peak globalisation is over. For those of us not on the front line, clearing the mind and thinking how to live in an altered world is the task at hand.
Beyond the immediate emergency, a radical change in European policies is needed. European fiscal policy should be based on a large common budget and greater autonomy for national governments.
These reports constitute background material for a comparative report for the project “Coronavirus COVID-19 outbreak in the EU – fundamental rights implications”.
