eDossier June 2021 Economic Anti-Crisis Measures of EU Member States after the Outbreak of COVID-19 in 2020 2 Economic Anti-Crisis Measures of EU Member States after the Outbreak of COVID-19 in 2020 TABLE OF CONTENTS Introduction: What have our states done in 2020 to support their economies?, by Roland Kulke 3 Spain: The Case of a Centre-Left Coalition Government, by Eduardo Sánchez Iglesias 6 Italy: Leaving industry alone, by Matteo Gaddi 23 Greece: Attacks on Workers and Environment, by Eleftheria Angeli 53 Portuguese Government defensive actions, by Mauricio Rezende Dias 62 Czech Republic: An Economic Colony without a Plan for National Development, by Ilona Švihlíková 71 Polish Government: Letting its people and its SMEs down, by Michał Menes 80 Ireland: Selling the Country to the Highest Bidder, by Emma Clancy 88 France: Supply Side & Technology – Sovereignty for the Few, by Pauline Debanes 99 Germany: Money as a Substitute for a Plan, by Michael Schwan 109 European Union strategies to tackle the economic impact at the outbreak of the COVID-Crisis, by Matteo Gaddi 122 IMPRINT 2021 transform! european network for alternative thinking and political dialogue Square de Meeûs 25 1000 Brussels, Belgium transform! europe is partially financed through a subsidy from the European Parliament. This work by transform! is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License. Permissions beyond the scope of this license may be available at office (at) transform-network.net. Layout: sanja.at e.U. Cover illustration: Mediamodifier from Pixabay Economic Anti-Crisis Measures of EU Member States after the Outbreak of COVID-19 in 2020 3 Introduction: What have our states done in 2020 to support their economies? By Roland Kulke, PhD in political science, is facilitator for the “productive transformation” working group of transform! europe as well as the representative of transform! europe to the EU institutions in Brussels. If you speak about economic crises in Europe the other per- process ticking. Every morning people were forced to go to son who is listening to you will often react by lifting her or work, unprotected. his eyebrow and ask you: “sorry, which crisis do you mean in particular?” And thus the near economic breakdown came to europe. People dying is one thing for the elites, but having the profit Europe certainly has evolved as being a crisis-ridden conti- accumulation interrupted is another one, especially if it ef- nent. That does not mean that other parts of the world are fects hegemonic capital factions. Angela Merkel was very better off, but we surely could do better. After the self-in- attentive when she was told that VW alone imports on a flected harm after the post-Lehman Brothers crisis in the just-in-time basis 20.000 pieces alone from North Italy and 2010 years, the economy in most of the EU member states Spain for its assembly lines in Germany. The conservatives (MS) at least gained some track in the last years. However, and neoliberals had to understand: This times it’s different. this mild economic recovery was not accompanied with This time there is no chance wielding the austerity blade and rising mass income – poverty prevails in large parts of our cut down investment, pensions etc – at least not for the time communities and large sections of our welfare states have being. First and foremost on the agenda of the ruling classes be grinded by the Troika. was: safe the single market. That was their primary common interest. As this interest was so strong, other high ranking Only in certain pockets of the continent, like in Germany, interests were sacrificed. trade unions were able to compensate for parts of the ac- cumulated losses of the last decades. Over the years, “the Europe saw the return of the strong state, a state which in- crisis” turned into “the crises”, a truly multiple crisis of our civ- tervenes with heavy hands in the economy, buys shares of ilisation. The youth successfully reminded the elder genera- the “strategic firms”, shut down whole economic sectors, im- tion that physics also rule economics and that the planetary posing export bans etc pp. Most importantly: the old mantra boundaries are not open for negotiation. After decades of of “you can spend every Euro only once” was forgotten. The mobilisation for a sustainable economy the climate move- states rushed to the markets and borrowed heavily, the na- ment really advanced and could turn at least parts of the tional debt went through the roof with vengeance. public, if not yet the necessary legislative processes. Quick action was necessary, and therefore observers of the Just in this moment a zoonotic event happened somewhere European integration process were able to see clearly, what in China, but it could have happened anywhere in the world. the EU basically still is after decades of integration: a large A virus mutated and found a new host: the human body. The common market in favour of national capital factions, still story afterwards is well known and often told. rooted in national social formations. In Europe, the virus was perceived as “Chinese problem”, not What we saw was that when urgent action was needed ours. We went to church, we had our carnival parades and of there was not a rush to common action, but to react fast, the course: our football games. We made it easy for the virus to MS of the EU decided it would be better to engage in a pro- find a new home in Europe. We were surprisingly hospitable cess of dismantling two the core rules of the EU. First of all to this new being. When the people died in hundred, and the neoliberal heart of the EU was suspended, the rules that then in thousands, the capitalists and their politicians, like states are not allowed to spend as much money as they want in large parts of Northern Italy, kept the profit accumulation (Stability and Growth Pact), and the second that they are not 4 allowed to support their own economies as they deem right That is why we focused on finding out “what makes our (state aid rules). If we speak in this regard of an EU reaction, states tick – what are they aiming at?” it was an international, not a supranational reaction. At that time of the reorientation of the national economic There was but one outstanding successful common answer. policies, transform! europe commissioned studies on a sam- The EU financed SURE program supporting the national labour ple of MS, representing different polit-economic settings markets in a common solidarity approach. The SURE program in the EU, representing centre and periphery and also the surely is a good example of what could be achieved when the different regions in the union. We invited scholars from all MS act in solidarity. MS are able to receive loans from the EU to these countries via a public call for papers. support their supporting short-time work schemes, the whole program has a volume of € 100 bn. Nevertheless, SURE was Our questions mostly clustered around three sets: the im- the exemption in 2020. The rule was rather suspending com- pact on workers and citizens, a forward-looking industrial mon rules, not building up common action. One has to admit and economic policy, and the impact on the climate. that in part this was a rational decision, because the EU is not ready to act in a truly anti-cyclical way. Are the MS of the EU able to implement social policies that help people, the environment but also their own economy? Even if the question of whether the EU is doing enough Are our states able to act in the interest of their own people, against Corona and the downturn dominates the debate, for the working masses, or do they act in the sense of inter- we must not overlook the much wider multiple crisis. The national capital without visions for an independent devel- Corona crisis is the result of the permanent transgression of opment that pays attention to meaningful cooperation with the planetary boundaries by the capitalist system based on other states? access to the two central resources: labour and nature. The central questions we asked: The over-exploitation of nature led to the Corona virus, We will provide here only small, but symptomatic examples which is a so-called zoonotic moment, i.e. the jumping from here. Where and how is the money spent? Does the mon- animal to human as a new host. ey create new jobs in new industries, and are old industry “made fit” for the future? Or, on the contrary, does the mon- Hence, it has to be clear that states must not only take care ey flow abroad for “gadgets” that may look good but do not of the economy, but must take care of the question of plan- promote the socio-economic transformation. Italy is a sad etary boundaries, too. The challenge our societies have to example here. The Italian government now wants massively deal with in the current crisis therefore is the over-exploita- to promote the purchase of battery-powered cars, but be- tion of nature and human beings by capitalism. cause of the failure of Italian industrial policy in last decades, Italy does not produce these cars. So, money will flow to This whole crisis is overdetermined in relation to its gender countries that produce these cars. aspect. This crisis is a “contact-crisis”, that means inter-per- sonal relations need to be stopped, due to the airborne vi- Another question was: Can we see a change of path towards rus.