Coronavirus in europe and global recuperation

It is clear that coronavirus affects all political, economic and social levels around the globe. But more specifically, how is its impact in Europe and which measures have been taken?

Just by knowing that last week oil prices went to its historical minimum, we can assume that we have a critical situation. The stock market has been dropping off for the last month, some evidences are the dividends cut of by some large firms such as Shell, Santander and BBVA.

The European Central Bank said last week that they are going to start a new emergency long-term refinancing operations in order to improve liquidity in the financial system and help the monetary markets. The plan, named PELTRO, has 7 refinancing operations, it started this May and will end between July and September of 2021.

But how is the global recuperation going to be after the pandemic? With V-form or L-form? Those two letters take an important place in the actual economic scenario. On the one hand, there are analysts that affirm that the recuperation will be fast and strong (V-form). The reason of this affirmation is that the plans applied to control collateral damages were effective.

On the other hand, there are analysts who say that the recuperation will be slow (L-form). This is because the heavy damage has caused workers and consumers to have fear, which at the same time has led to a change in their consumption habits.

Furthermore, it is important to mention the prominent difference in how the pandemic has affected West and East Europe. There are more than 102.200 deaths in countries such as Italy, France, Spain, and UK , whereas in countries such as Poland, Czech Republic, Slovakia, Hungary and Romania, the deaths do not even reach 1.850. This may have to do with the political decisions taken by their governments.

At the very beginning, East Europe countries were conscious of the vulnerability of their sanitary system. Therefore, governments applied drastic measures in the initial phase of the pandemic, when they had less infected cases than Italy or Spain.

These restrictive measures (closing borders and limit free circulation) have had a hard social impact for the citizens. However, the social discipline on those countries has been drastic too and for historical reasons they are used to follow state orders. Also, Poplawski (Head of the Central Europe department at the Center for Oriental Studies (OSW) in Warsaw) says that their societies know that they have to be prepared for hard times and gives the West countries a lesson: only the State can’t protect us, citizens have to be involved for the same cause