Health vs the economy in the pandemic: a Southern European Covid-19 response model?

The Covid-19 pandemic has shaken European and global societies dramatically. In the EU context, the narrative has highlighted the difference with the Eurozone crisis both in the nature of the shock and in the speed and scale of the response. The symmetric nature of the pandemic shock - similar to that of natural disasters - comes, however, with an highly asymmetric impact across the EU27. The Southern Member States have been overrepresented in the early stage of the Covid-19 crisis among the countries most severely hit by the pandemic. Additionally, the pandemic compounds previous well established gaps in health, social and economic performance which have far from recovered from the Great Recession and Eurozone crisis along with the strengthening of the squeeze of the austerity paradigm on national budgets, especially in the periphery. The worst hit Member States were thus left to fend for themselves with weaker health systems and limited fiscal spaces. The analysis investigates comparatively the health and economic context in the wake of the pandemic as well as its management along its health-economic trade-off. In doing so the work considers whether an homogeneous pandemic response model emerges in the Southern Member States in terms of outbreaks, containment and fiscal response. Considering the similarities in the chosen policy mixes in Cyprus, Greece, Italy, Malta, Portugal and Spain, the analysis draws some consideration on preparedness in the health sector, the demographic context and limited economic resources and how they may have informed the chosen policy mix, which has seen hefty restrictions and more severe lockdowns also in the Southern Member States relatively spared by the outbreak. The analysis combines a quantitative approach in comparing the context and choices in the policy mix within the periphery and against alternative approaches in the core, with an in-depth qualitative assessment of responses and their mid-term implications for Southern societies and economies. Beyond the understanding of outbreak response dynamics in the South of Europe, the work extends the literature on core-periphery divergences within the EU to the case of the Covid-19 pandemic, contributing as well to the ongoing reform debate and the (social) sustainability of EMU in a divided Europe. In doing so it draws some preliminary considerations on how the novel response instruments of SURE and NGEU and the outlook for transnational solidarity may depart from the legacy of the past and contribute to mitigate the core-periphery gap and its problematic implications for the support for integration in Southern countries.