European Union

The government should publish an exit strategy from the coronavirus lockdown this week, opposition Labour party leader Keir Starmer has demanded. In a latter to Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab, who is deputising for Boris Johnson while the Prime Minister recovers...

On Tuesday (14 April) twenty-two Swedish researchers, professors and doctors published an open letter criticising the strategy followed by the government and authorities. Printed in the country’s biggest broadsheet, Dagens Nyheter, the group claimed that the policies dealing with the...

Jutta Urpilainen, the EU Commissioner for International Partnerships, warns that unless something is done to help developing countries, a second wave of coronavirus will swarm Europe. The EU has not only a moral obligation to assist countries in Africa, Latin...

Belgium’s National Security Council is set to decide this evening whether and until when the current lockdown measures will be extended. The option of 3 May was floated during the last meeting. However, as France has prolonged to 11 May,...

Amazon was asked by a French court to restrict its deliveries to essential goods only until an assessment of the epidemic risks can be carried out. The court in Nanterre, near Paris, said in its ruling that “the company obviously...

Written by Gregor Erbach,

© sergei_fish13 / Adobe Stock

Measures to contain the COVID-19 (novel coronavirus) pandemic have led to a dramatic reduction in travel and economic activity. In consequence, energy consumption and greenhouse gas emissions have fallen sharply. This in turn had an impact on the prices of energy commodities and emissions allowances, which have also dropped rapidly. Thanks to lessons learned after the 2009 economic crisis, which caused a massive surplus of carbon emission allowances in the EU Emission Trading System, a market stability reserve was put in place in 2019 to automatically adjust the supply of allowances to actual demand and prevent a collapse of the carbon price.

The handling of the COVID-19 crisis had already led to an economic downturn, reduced tax receipts and increased government spending to support companies and citizens. Stimulus programmes are considered necessary to relaunch the economy after the crisis. While some governments consider that ambitious programmes like the European Green Deal will hinder economic recovery after the crisis, the European Commission and others maintain that the European Green Deal is the growth strategy that can help Europe’s economic recovery while at the same time addressing the global climate emergency.

The restrictions on travel and large-scale gatherings may also slow down legislative activity related to the European Green Deal, as EU institutions change their calendars, agendas and priorities. Decision-making under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, the International Civil Aviation Organization and the International Maritime Organization are also affected by the cancellation and postponement of important meetings and conferences.

Read the complete briefing on ‘Impact of the coronavirus crisis on climate action and the European Green Deal‘ in the Think Tank pages of the European Parliament.

Development of COVID-19 cases and deaths, oil prices, carbon prices and the euro-area stock market index, January-March 2020.

Polish lawmakers are to debate a proposal to tighten already restrictive abortion rules on Wednesday (15 April), while rights activists protested on social media as coronavirus limits public gatherings.

"We have to deal with COVID-19, but at the same time, we have to make sure that the health crisis doesn't become a security crisis," NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg told EURACTIV in an interview about NATO's crisis response and threat preparedness, China's role and the pandemic's impact on the military alliance.

Donald Trump ordered a freeze on funding for the World Health Organization for "mismanaging" the coronavirus crisis, as world leaders weighed easing lockdowns that threaten to tip the global economy into a second Great Depression.

Portugal may need to nationalise its flag carrier TAP and other companies badly hit by the economic impact of the coronavirus outbreak, Prime Minister Antonio Costa said on Tuesday (14 April).

Some 40% of people polled in Spain and 38% in the UK have seen some form of deliberate coronavirus disinformation on digital platforms like Facebook or Twitter, according to a new survey in six countries by the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism at the University of Oxford. The figures were lower in the other four countries, down to 33% in the US and 28% in Germany.

EU export restrictions will be limited to masks only from 26 April and will exclude the Western Balkans, according to a draft regulation seen by Reuters. Protective spectacles and visors, face shields, protective garments, gloves, and mouth and nose masks can only be exported to non-EU countries under special permits granted by member states, for now. EU hopefuls in the Balkans had in the past complained about lack of solidarity.

US president Donald Trump, who has been under criticism for his handling of the response to the coronavirus, blamed the World Health Organisation for what he called its failures and said he planned to halt American funding of the organisation, the New York Times reports. "Everybody knows what is going on there," he said, blaming the organisation for a "disastrous decision to oppose travel restrictions from China and other nations."

Poland is preparing to read a controversial new law in parliament on Wednesday and Thursday, forbidding women to have abortions even if the child was to be born handicapped. The president, Andrzej Duda, has said he would sign it. But women's groups and other activists accused the government of using the pandemic to ram through unpopular legislation, with public protests, for instance, currently limited to people honking horns outside parliament.

EU governments seek difficult balance between restarting economy and risking resurgence in pandemic. The commission wants them to coordinate, but some countries are already easing lockdowns.

Most EU countries are organising distance e-learning to support students amid the coronavirus pandemic, but skills and opportunities are not the same among member states.

Some 180 European politicians, business leaders, MEPs and environmental activists have called for green recovery investment packages to develop "a new model of prosperity" after the pandemic ends.

Four months into the corona crisis and one month into the social and economic shutdown, it seems the big geopolitical loser of the pandemic is likely going to be Europe.

Four months into the corona crisis and one month into the social and economic shutdown, it seems the big geopolitical loser of the pandemic is likely going to be Europe.

Social distancing was not on the minds of the 2,000 seasonal workers tightly packed into airports in Romania en route to Germany last week.