Étiquette : COVID-19 Page 1 of 17

L’Europe Centrale face à la pandémie de Covid-19

On 07/07/2023

Cette recension a été publiée dans le numéro d’été 2023 de Politique étrangère (n° 2/2023). Pierre-Frédéric Weber propose une analyse de l’ouvrage de Kinga Torbicka (dir.), L’Europe Centrale face à la pandémie de Covid-19. De la transformation anthropologique vers la recomposition géopolitique (WUW [Éditions de l’université de Varsovie], 2022, 232 pages).

Illustration d'arrière-plan par Fusion Medical Animation représentant un microbe en macro. Au premier plan, couverture du livre "L’Europe Centrale face à la pandémie de Covid-19. De la transformation anthropologique vers la recomposition géopolitique".

À peine éteints les derniers feux et contre-feux de la pandémie de Covid-19, on voit paraître des travaux de recherche visant à analyser les choix politiques et économiques des acteurs étatiques, ainsi que les impacts multiformes de cette première crise sanitaire mondiale du xxi^e siècle. L’équipe de recherche en sciences humaines et sociales du Centre de civilisation française et d’études francophones de l’université de Varsovie livre ici un volume ambitieux et réussi, intégralement disponible sur Internet. Cet ouvrage propose un regard pluriel sur la macro-région d’Europe centrale, étudiée sous l’angle des changements imposés par la pandémie et des choix stratégiques de ses élites politiques.

European economic governance: Past errors and future promises

de Politique Etrangère

On 02/02/2023

dans PE in english

This article is the English version of: Vivien A. Schmidt, « Gouvernance économique européenne : entre erreurs passées et promesses d’avenir », published in Politique étrangère, Vol. 87, Issue 4, 2021.

Image de fond avec les drapeaux de l'Union européenne, couverture du numéro 4 de 2021 de la revue Politique Étrangère.

The responses to the Covid-19 crisis, in which the rules of the Stability and Growth Pact (SGP) were suspended and the European Union (EU) took on significant EU level debt for the purposes of redistributive solidarity, constitute a great leap forward for the EU. They also represent a tacit acknowledgment that the policies put in place in response to the Eurozone crisis, focused on “governing by rules and ruling by numbers”, with punitive conditionality for countries in trouble, were not fit for purpose. The question for today is: Will the EU go back to the status quo ante of the Eurozone, focused on rules-based, numbers-targeting governance, with limited common EU instruments for investment in the future? Or will it instead move beyond the Eurozone and Covid-19 crisis effectively and democratically, toward more sustainable and equitable growth and prosperity for all Europeans?

Europe, Power and Finance

de Politique Etrangère

On 05/01/2023

dans PE in english

This article is the English version of : Sylvie Goulard, « L’Europe, la puissance et la finance », published in Politique étrangère, Vol. 86, Issue 2, 2021.

The world is rapidly changing, and Europe is striving to find its place. In the debates over European sovereignty, the issues frequently revolve around diplomacy, defence and occasionally industrial policy, but only rarely finance. The most noteworthy advance in European construction was undoubtedly the single currency, but the European Union (EU) could make much better use of its strengths in the financial area. It took the global financial crisis for common regulatory rules governing finance to be adopted and for their control to be entrusted to European supervisory authorities. Even today, the domestic financial services market remains fragmented and the euro’s geopolitical role unfulfilled. Yet the strategic nature of the financial stakes is evidenced by several factors.

First, financing innovation is essential to remain internationally competitive. The climate transition alone requires massive investments, without which it will be impossible to achieve the target of reducing CO2 emissions to zero by 2050. Bridging the technology gap also requires substantial capital, in this case with a special twist: not only is finance indispensable for innovation, but innovation transforms finance. Tech companies, on the strength of their customer data, are also entering the payments market (e.g. Facebook with its Diem/Libra project).

Alongside these structural changes, cyclical factors also come into play. The COVID-19 pandemic forced governments to provide unprecedented and massive financial support…

Read the rest of the article here.

>>> More articles of Politique étrangère are available for reading
on Cairn International <<<

COVID-19 Puts International Health Cooperation to the Test

de Politique Etrangère

On 15/12/2022

dans PE in english

This article is the English version of : Didier Houssin, « La coopération sanitaire à l’épreuve du Covid-19 », published in Politique étrangère, Vol. 85, Issue 3, 2020.

Over the past months, the human race has been confronted with a new and dangerous member of the coronavirus family: following the coronavirus SARS-CoV-1, responsible for the severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) epidemic that began in China in 2003, and then MERS-CoV, which appeared in Saudi Arabia in 2012, SARS-CoV-2 is responsible for the COVID-19 pandemic that was first identified in China at the end of 2019.

After about six months of transmission of a virus that has a tropism for the human respiratory tract, the toll on June 8, 2020, was almost 7 million identified cases and more than 400,000 deaths, mostly in the World Health Organization (WHO) regions of Europe and the Americas. The pandemic is still ongoing. The trajectory and intensity of the virus’s transmission may still hold surprises. However, it is possible to make a few initial observations on the management of this epidemic. The least one can say is that from the outset it has been unconducive to international cooperation in matters of health.

The epidemic caused by the SARS-CoV-2 virus, which began in China in the final weeks of 2019, did not come as a total surprise. The zoonotic risks linked to dense human populations coming into contact with many species of domestic and wild animals, especially in live animal markets, are well known; the previous coronavirus epidemics have already demonstrated this. The WHO was first informed of clusters of cases of pneumonia of unknown cause in Wuhan, in the Chinese province of Hubei, on December 31, 2020. A new coronavirus was quickly held responsible…

Read the rest of the article here.

>>> More articles of Politique étrangère are available for reading
on Cairn International <<<