ABSTRACT
Despite the pandemic was, first and foremost, a sanitary crisis, economic consequences soon began to emerge. A negative economic outlook was expected as the inevitable outcome of mandatory lockdown that political authorities resorted to in order to mitigate the spread of COVID-19. This chapter problematises the economic dimension of the pandemic. The main findings point at an unprecedented economic crisis with several manifestations (negative economic growth, growing unemployment, deterioration of the fiscal deficit and rising public debt), and how national governments changed the economic policy mix in order to deliver an appropriate answer to the anomalies triggered by the pandemic. The EU reacted promptly, at least when the pandemic crisis is compared with previous crisis. The chapter therefore addresses the several vehicles of crisis response of the EU at the macroeconomic level. Lastly, this chapter encompasses a normative dimension by asking whether the adjusted economic policy represents a paradigm shift, bringing the discussion into the arena of contrasting schools of economic thought.
