A test of resilience: COVID-19 and the business of europe's green deal

If the notion of ‘business as usual’ as we entered the 2020s had any residual meaning, it must surely have lost it in the wake of Covid-19. The impact of the global pandemic is clearly enormous in health, social and economic terms. Even if different countries and regions are experiencing its grim human effects in different ways, depending on the timing and extent of public health responses and their effectiveness, the degree to which social and economic activity has shut down is significant almost everywhere. With the prospect that restrictions are maintained in some form for many months to come, global financial markets are anticipating a depression as severe as in the 1930s, and perhaps even more so in some countries – even taking into account the historic commitments from governments and financial institutions to construct emergency economic survival and recovery packages.