Sovereign Financing During the COVID-19 Pandemic: The Debt Implications of Italy's Socio-Economic Measures for 2020 and the Response of the European Union

Scali, Emma Luce (2020) Sovereign Financing During the COVID-19 Pandemic: The Debt Implications of Italy's Socio-Economic Measures for 2020 and the Response of the European Union. In: Gli effetti dell’emergenza Covid-19 su commercio, investimenti e occupazione: Una prospettiva italiana. Bologna: Dipartimento di Scienze Giuridiche, pp. 369-387. ISBN 9788854970243

[img]
Preview
Text
Scali_Sovereign Financing During COVID-19 Pandemic_FINAL.pdf - Published Version
Available under License Creative Commons Attribution.

Download (249kB)

Abstract

The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic has prompted across the world massive intervention of public authorities for the management both of the health emergency and its economic ramifications. Many countries, including Italy, have adopted urgent measures to provide inter alia financial support to the workers, families and businesses that have been most affected by the dramatic impacts that the spread of the disease and the necessary containment measures are having on the national and global economies. These measures are necessary and due, including under international human rights law, but demand extraordinary resources, which many countries at present are able to raise only through additional borrowing. States, such as Italy, that entered the crisis from an already vulnerable fiscal position, can only fulfil their duties by seriously compromising (possibly long-term) the sustainability of their public finances. This contribution illustrates the main socio-economic measures so far adopted by Italy to counter the economic effects of the pandemic, and their budgetary implications. It then introduces and offers a very provisional interpretation of the new key mechanisms put in place by the EU to assist the exceptional financing needs of its Members States. All these, with the exception of a possible Recovery Fund (still at the proposal stage), rest on some sort of debt logic, suggesting that alternatives to debt may be impossible to achieve, even in a world afflicted by an unprecedented pandemic.

Item Type: Book Section
Identification Number: https://doi.org/10.6092/unibo/amsacta/6440
Dates:
DateEvent
1 July 2020Published
Subjects: CAH15 - social sciences > CAH15-01 - sociology, social policy and anthropology > CAH15-01-01 - social sciences (non-specific)
CAH15 - social sciences > CAH15-01 - sociology, social policy and anthropology > CAH15-01-03 - social policy
CAH15 - social sciences > CAH15-02 - economics > CAH15-02-01 - economics
CAH15 - social sciences > CAH15-03 - politics > CAH15-03-01 - politics
CAH16 - law > CAH16-01 - law > CAH16-01-01 - law
Divisions: Faculty of Business, Law and Social Sciences > School of Law
Depositing User: Emma Scali
Date Deposited: 23 Jun 2022 09:52
Last Modified: 23 Jun 2022 09:52
URI: https://www.open-access.bcu.ac.uk/id/eprint/13341

Actions (login required)

View Item View Item

Research

In this section...