How well has the European Union handled the Covid-19 pandemic? Dionyssis G. Dimitrakopoulos and Georgette Lalis present a detailed analysis of the EU’s actions thus far in the outbreak. They write that despite a slow and initially haphazard approach, there has ultimately been a substantial response.
Public health care systems, alongside state bureaucracies and public finances, are being tested to […]
Lockdowns have now become a fact of life for many countries across the world, but even if they succeed in halting the spread of Covid-19, are they sustainable? Martin J. Bull argues that lockdowns pose major challenges for European countries and the approach pursued by South Korea may need to be explored as a long-term solution.
Are ‘authoritarian-style’ lockdowns, involving […]
Tough questions about the EU’s role in the pandemic response are coming soon – if they are not already here. The problem is we have few criteria against which to assess the EU’s performance during crises. Mark Rhinard lays out some options.
One truism of any crisis is the swift onset of the blame game. Even before the initial shock […]
The Covid-19 crisis illustrates that globalisation entails health risks, and that the institutional design of public health systems is ill-suited for the scale of a pandemic, writes Joan Costa-Font. He argues that the inefficiency of the policies implemented by different EU member states highlights why a Europe-wide public health authority should now be a priority to counteract collective action […]
EU governments have adopted a diverse range of measures to tackle the coronavirus crisis, but there has been a perceived lack of coordination and unity among member states. Michael Cottakis argues that for Europe, the danger is obvious: the normalisation of new measures of protection and of the belief that national solutions are sufficient for addressing problems on a […]
The principle of differentiated integration, under which states participate in EU policies selectively, has become a core feature of the European Union. But little is known about the attitudes of citizens toward this form of integration. Drawing on a new study of Denmark’s 2015 referendum on the country’s opt-out from EU Justice and Home Affairs cooperation, Frank Schimmelfennig and […]
COVID-19 is putting unprecedented pressure on European healthcare systems. Tamara Popic draws together some early lessons, arguing that the crisis should prompt a rethink of the direction of healthcare policies across Europe, and that the principle of solidarity must now move to the forefront as countries seek to mitigate the impact of the outbreak.
The spread of COVID-19 has put […]
What are the likely political and economic implications of the Covid-19 crisis for European states? Patrick Kaczmarczyk writes that the austerity measures imposed on Eurozone countries after the global financial crisis led to a surge of right wing and anti-EU parties across the continent. So far, these parties have gained strength, but have not yet come into power. If the […]
Income inequality and radical right voting have both increased in the past decades, but are the two phenomena linked? Sarah Engler and David Weisstanner write that rising inequality signals to voters higher up in the income and status hierarchy the threat of a ‘steep’ social decline. When inequality increases, these voters then turn to radical right parties who offer […]
The COVID-19 pandemic is a public health emergency, but it also has the potential to impact on many other elements of European societies beyond health services. Jelena Dzankic and Lorenzo Piccoli write on the effect the outbreak is having on the uses and meanings of citizenship.
The rapid spread of the coronavirus has wrecked human mobility, and profoundly disrupted the […]
Given the crisis facing many countries across Europe, we will be compiling a selection of comments from academics, journalists and other experts on this page. If you would like to have a short comment included, please email the Managing Editor at europpblog@lse.ac.uk
20 March
So, this is what the government of #Singapore (who it might not have escaped you, is good at dealing with #epidemics) is doing. Yes, it's #tracking. I don't think we're going to get away from that… https://t.co/iCmsTG6dLw
— Catherine Fieschi (@CFieschi) March 20, 2020
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Tamara Popic has written an article for EUROPP on some early lessons that can be learned for European […]
Given the unprecedented response of governments across the world to COVID-19, what lessons can be learned from the last pandemic to hit the world in 2009? Esther Versluis explains that a notable problem with the WHO’s response to the swine flu pandemic was that it downplayed the uncertain nature of information during the outbreak, prompting criticism of its advice. […]
A battle of ideas dominated the academic debate on the Eurozone crisis. One view stressed the importance of fiscal discipline, while the other highlighted the systemic roots of financial turmoil. Drawing on a new study based on a quantitative text analysis of ECB Executive Board members’ speeches, Federico Maria Ferrara shows how the ECB progressively moved from a fiscal […]
Poland will hold a presidential election on 10 May, with a second round of voting scheduled for two weeks later if no candidate wins 50% of the vote. Aleks Szczerbiak explains that incumbent President Andrzej Duda will start as favourite, boosted by his credibility in helping deliver the government’s social spending and welfare policies, and his strong base in […]
The Eurozone crisis had a clear impact on trust in the euro and the European Central Bank (ECB). However, drawing on a new study, Stephanie Bergbauer, Nils Hernborg, Jean-François Jamet and Eric Persson explain that there are significant differences in the way citizens place trust in the euro and the ECB. They find that while support for the euro is primarily […]
It has long been assumed that female politicians face a trade-off between having a family life and a successful parliamentary career, while their male colleagues do not. Devin Joshi and Ryan Goehrung find that, while female MPs are still more likely to be unmarried and have fewer children, the gap in parental and marital status of members of parliament varies considerably internationally. They […]
Marine Le Pen has targeted the French local elections on 15 and 22 March as a way to build momentum ahead of the next French presidential election in 2022. Drawing on a new study, Diane Bolet writes on the role of economic competition between native workers and immigrants in determining support for Le Pen’s National Rally (formerly the Front […]
Companies based within the EU occasionally send their employees to work in other EU member states for limited periods of time – a process commonly termed ‘posting’. In principle, these workers are entitled under EU law to certain rights while working abroad, but in practice these rights are not always respected. Drawing on a new study, Magdalena Bernaciak and […]
What effects might Brexit have on the EU’s capacity to play an effective role in the world arena? Michael Smith writes that the Withdrawal Agreement suggests both the UK and EU will have to reassess their global roles and their discourses of globalism, but whereas for the UK this is an existential problem, for the EU it is part of a continuing […]
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Greek-Turkish border crisis: Refugees are paying the price for the EU’s failure to reform its asylum system
Greek-Turkish border crisis: Refugees are paying the price for the EU’s failure to reform its asylum system
At the end of February, Turkey announced that it would no longer enforce a deal reached with the EU in 2016 to block irregular migration routes into Greece. Nicoletta Enria and Sarah Gerwens write that the resulting crisis at the Greek-Turkish border highlights the failure of the EU to effectively reform its asylum system.
In late February, before COVID-19 began […]