The drastic increase of lobbying expenditure by Big Tech companies is denting Europe’s traditionally strict privacy laws and shifting more power into the hands of corporations. And the COVID-19 is playing in the latter's hand.
Despite the Dieselgate scandal, diesel-fueled cars are still the most popular in Europe. A trend that is slowly changing, as governments and the public opinion are starting to grasp with their impact on public health.
Almost every local government across the EU expects a sharp decrease in revenues this year due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Expenditure on health, social services and civil protection has boomed, while income from tourism and the economy is decreasing.
The discovery in the last few years of large gas reserves in the region has whetted appetites in Ankara, which has been forcefully demanding its piece of the pie, even at the risk of contesting the limits of respective economic zones as well as provoking the EU’s intervention and threatening the region’s stability.
After observing a decline in 2020, the mechanical engineering industry in the EU is predicted to grow next year, in spite of the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic.
The COVID-19 crisis will lead to a sharp contraction of GDP in all EU member states. From billions for airlines to several hundred euros for small businesses, governments have been supporting their economy in different ways.
European countries are not all equal in the face of the Covid-19 crisis. Both the impact of the epidemic and responses to it have differed greatly, as this overview by Alternatives Economiques shows.
Migrant workers’ remittances are economically indispensable to many countries. However, across the world remittances will decline by about 20 percent in 2020 due to the pandemic.
The Covid-19 crisis brought about unprecedented reductions in CO2 emissions and energy consumption, benefiting renewables. This effect may be temporary however – but it could also mark the beginning of an ecological transition compatible with safeguarding the planet.
Most of the drugs sold worldwide come from India and China, where production is cheapest. As a result, Europe’s supply of medicines is in the hands of a few companies.