The former Finnish Prime Minister Alexander Stubb gives his verdict on how COVID-19 will impact the EU. Nordic Summit is a recurring annual event for Danske Bank’s corporate and institutional clients.
Through Nordic Summit 2020 - this year transformed into a series of virtual sessions - Danske Bank sheds light on the current COVID-19 pandemic and its consequences for the global economy and the society as a whole.
The session was moderated by Piet Philip Haines Christiansen, Chief ECB Strategist in Danske Bank, and Aila Mihr, Senior Analyst in Danske Bank.
Watch a recap
Key-takeaways from Stubb
- In these types of crises, we have a tendency to do three things: we over-rationalise the past, we overdramatize the present and we underestimate the future.
- It is crucial that we don’t overdramatize what's going on. We need to prepare for what might be in store in the future and stop thinking about the world as a perfect utopia.
- Crises like COVID-19 always go through three phases: crisis, chaos and suboptimal solution.
- In the beginning of the crisis, EU first went domestic and national. A lot of EU member states stopped the free movement of goods, people, services and to a certain extent, money. In many ways, they wanted to protect their own. But once the EU woke up of its slumber, it has actually done a lot and very fast: EU has put together an overall rescue package in the ballpark of 2.5-3 trillion euros – this is a lot of money coming from the EU.
- However, regardless of what the European Union does, it's never going to be enough. One of the reasons for that is that the instruments are limited with EU's budget being approximately 1% of the GNI of the whole European area. This means that the redistributive power and capacity to act still lie on a lot of these issues with the nation state.
- In any case, we will be in a deep recession-come-depression. It's just a question of how quickly do we get out of there.
Read more about Alexander Stubb in the article on danskebank.com.
Nordic Summit – what you need to know
Nordic Summit is a recurring annual event for Danske Bank’s corporate and institutional clients, where we share a Nordic perspective on the most critical topics and megatrends. The event includes a series of keynote speeches andpanel debates with leading international experts, politicians and industry leaders on these subjects. Due to the global COVID-19 pandemic, it was decided to transform this year’s event into a series of virtual sessions all focusing on COVID-19. We are making the insights from the day available for everyone on our website.
