When Covid-19 paralyzed the world in the spring of 2020, Europeans quickly realized that if they did nothing, the terrible recession they were going through – the worst since the Second World War – would have the consequence of fragmenting yet another little more the Old Continent and would endanger the European Union (EU). Because the pandemic has hit hard the countries of the South, very dependent on tourism, which are also those that the previous crisis of 2008 had damaged, there was an urgent need to help them. In this context, they have, even before the implementation of the recovery plan of 750 billion euros, taken emergency measures in order to adapt the Community cohesion policy, whose mission is to help reduce the differences within the EU.
These efforts made it possible to limit the damage, but they were not enough, as evidenced by the report on cohesion published by the European Commission on Wednesday 9 February. Thus, the excess mortality observed since the start of the pandemic stands at 13% on average for the Twenty-Seven but at 17% in the poorest countries of the EU, whose health systems are less efficient and where, sometimes, the populations have received fewer vaccinations.
The Twenty-Seven are devoting large resources to everything that can help bring European economies together. In the Community budget for 2021-2027, the cohesion funds represent 392 billion euros, i.e. almost 40% of the total planned expenditure (excluding the recovery plan) over this period. They are reserved for the least developed Member States: Bulgaria, Czech Republic, Estonia, Greece, Croatia, Cyprus, Latvia, Lithuania, Hungary, Malta, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Slovenia and Slovenia.
Voluntary policy
Thanks to this proactive policy, the gaps are narrowing within the EU. Thus, the cohesion funds distributed between 2014 and 2020 should make it possible, calculated by the Commission, to reduce by 3.5% the difference between the gross domestic product (GDP) per capita of the 10% poorest regions and the GDP per head of the 10% richest regions. They accounted for 52% of the public investments that the “fifteen cohesion countries” made during this period.
“Central and Eastern European countries continue to catch up”, explains Cohesion Commissioner Elisa Ferreira
“Central and Eastern European countries continue to catch up”explains Elisa Ferreira, the Commissioner for Cohesion, who talks about the structural transformations of their economies, in particular a transfer of employment from agriculture to sectors with
higher added value. The Czech Republic posted, in 2020, a GDP per capita (in purchasing power parity) almost at the level of the average of the Twenty-Seven (93%), and countries such as Slovenia (89%) or Lithuania ( 87%) came close.
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