European Union

The UN has postponed a critical summit meant to jumpstart global climate action until 2021 as the world reels from the coronavirus pandemic. EURACTIV's media partner Climate Home News reports.

Written by Nora Milotay and Gianluca Sgueo,

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Humans are among the many living species capable of collaborative and imaginative thinking. While it is widely agreed among scholars that this capacity has contributed to making humans the dominant species, other crucial questions remain open to debate. Is it possible to encourage large groups of people to engage in collective thinking? Is it possible to coordinate citizens to find solutions to address global challenges? Some scholars claim that large groups of independent, motivated, and well-informed people can, collectively, make better decisions than isolated individuals can – what is known as ‘collective intelligence.’

The social dimension of collective intelligence mainly relates to social aspects of the economy and of innovation. It shows that a holistic approach to innovation – one that includes not only technological but also social aspects – can greatly contribute to the EU’s goal of promoting a just transition for everyone to a sustainable and green economy in the digital age. The EU has been taking concrete action to promote social innovation by supporting the development of its theory and practice. Mainly through funding programmes, it helps to seek new types of partners and build new capacity – and thus shape the future of local and national innovations aimed at societal needs.

The democratic dimension suggests that the power of the collective can be leveraged so as to improve public decision-making systems. Supported by technology, policy-makers can harness the ‘civic surplus’ of citizens – thus providing smarter solutions to regulatory challenges. This is particularly relevant at EU level in view of the planned Conference on the Future of Europe, aimed at engaging communities at large and making EU decision-making more inclusive and participatory.

The current coronavirus crisis is likely to change society and our economy in ways as yet too early to predict, but recovery after the crisis will require new ways of thinking and acting to overcome common challenges, and thus making use of our collective intelligence should be more urgent than ever. In the longer term, in order to mobilise collective intelligence across the EU and to fully exploit its innovative potential, the EU needs to strengthen its education policies and promote a shared understanding of a holistic approach to innovation and of collective intelligence – and thus become a ‘global brain,’ with a solid institutional set-up at the centre of a subsidised experimentation process that meets the challenges imposed by modern-day transformations.

Read the complete briefing on ‘Collective intelligence at EU level: Social and democratic dimensions‘ in the Think Tank pages of the European Parliament.

Health, global security and international stability are inextricably linked. And our globalised, urbanised and at the same time politically fragmented world has never been as prone to pandemics as it is today. Wolfgang Ischinger and Stefan Oschmann present five points that are critical in order to be better prepared for situations like these in the future.

Some 53% of consumers are willing to pay for news in the future and as many as 70% for entertainment, according to a report by the World Economic Forum (WEF), published on Thursday (2 April).

Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán is seeking conservative support to remain within Europe's main centre-right political bloc despite concerns over his adoption of emergency powers to rule by decree.

Spain topped 100,000 coronavirus infections and registered its highest daily death toll Wednesday as health authorities race to deploy hospital beds to deal with the pressure of the pandemic.

Hospitals in the Belgian capital called on the federal government on Wednesday (1 April) to address a shortage of medicines and equipment, as COVID-19 patients continue to arrive at intensive care units that are starting to fill up.

When six Chinese doctors landed in Belgrade two weeks ago, Serbia's president greeted them with elbow-bumps before laying a kiss on their country's flag, a gesture of gratitude that sent Chinese social media aflutter.

Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, director of the WHO, has said he was "deeply concerned about the rapid escalation and global spread of infection." "Over the past five weeks, we have witnessed a near exponential growth in the number of new cases," he said Wednesday. "The number of deaths has more than doubled in the past week. In the next few days, we will reach one million confirmed cases and 50,000 deaths."

EU countries must match European Central Bank (ECB) bond-buying with economic stimulus packages to avoid a new debt crisis, Greek central bank chief Yannis Stournaras. has said. "Moral hazard considerations should not be the main determinant of our actions today," he told the Bloomberg news agency. "Common issuance of debt is common action against the common enemy," he added, amid Dutch and German opposition to joint bonds.

Greenhouse gas output from plane journeys within the EU rose again in 2019, according to new data from the European Commission, but that growth is likely to stop for a while, with 2020 set to be a lean year for airlines because of coronavirus.

The Chinese city of Shenzhen has banned eating dogs and cats as part of a wider clampdown on the wildlife trade since the emergence of the new coronavirus, Reuters reports. Scientists suspect the coronavirus passed to humans from animals. Some of the earliest infections were found in people who had exposure to a wildlife market in the city of Wuhan, where bats, snakes, civets, and other animals were sold.

France has said joint borrowing could be limited to a short time to soothe German objections to the project. "Having a fund for, let's say, five or 10 years ... and with the possibility of having common debt but only within that fund ... might be more acceptable for other countries," its finance minister Bruno le Maire told the FT. Europe was facing "a 'postwar' economic situation," he added.

"Exploiting the pandemic to create a state ruled under a permanent exception is ... morally unacceptable," Donald Tusk, the head of the centre-right EPP party, said in a letter to members, referring to steps taken by Hungary's authoritarian prime minister Viktor Orban, also an EPP member. Some 13 EU states - including France, Germany, Spain, the Benelux, and the Nordic states - said the same in a joint statement Wednesday.

An already fragile business model for journalism might be dealt a lethal blow in the corona crisis. And the freedom of the press itself is coming under extreme pressure, as governments take swift and debilitating measures fighting the pandemic.

EU countries reported shortages of ventilators, personal protective equipment and testing kits, but also being victims of fraud. Meanwhile, the European Commission has scaled up its efforts to avoid shortages of ani-virus gear and faulty medical supplies in the EU.

The EU's latest navy operation, Irini, designed to counter arms trafficking to Libya, is keeping details on migration rescue procedures a secret. The mission was agreed earlier this week.

Right now, we are about halfway between utopia and dystopia. This is our watershed moment.

Formula 1 engineers have joined American auto manufacturers General Motors and Ford, and French car companies PSA and Renault, in response to a massive global shortage of vital ventilators, France24 reports. The "Project Pitlane" mission takes advantage of "the core skills of the F1 industry: rapid design, prototype manufacture, test and skilled assembly," Formula 1 said in a statement.

Russia has dispatched a cargo plane with masks and medical equipment to the US after Donald Trump accepted an offer of humanitarian aid from Vladimir Putin to fight the coronavirus outbreak, the Guardian writes. The US has more than 188,000 confirmed cases of coronavirus and more than 3,900 deaths. On Monday, Trump said "Russia sent us a very, very large planeload of things, medical equipment, which was very nice."