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

Emma Luce Scali

    Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceedingChapterpeer-review

    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.
    Original languageEnglish
    Title of host publicationGli effetti dell?emergenza Covid-19 su commercio, investimenti e occupazione: Una prospettiva italiana
    PublisherBologna: Dipartimento di Scienze Giuridiche
    Pages369-387
    Number of pages19
    ISBN (Print)9788854970243
    Publication statusPublished (VoR) - 1 Jul 2020

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