Focus euroatlantico, n. 14 (febbraio-maggio 2020)

The first issue of the 2020 Euro-Atlantic Focus begins, as usual, with an analysis of the state of play in the transatlantic relationship (supplemented by a number of graphs in the appendix). The Covid-19 pandemic has exacerbated pre-existing divergences between Europe and the United States, which are now the main epicentres of the contagion. European attempts to involve the United States in a multilateral crisis management framework have been to no avail. The first essay of the Focus elaborates on the public health policies of the US and the EU in response to Covid-19. Laure-Anais Zultak and Nina van der Mark explain that the EU member states and the federated states of the US have acted largely independently from one another, at times adopting mutually contrasting decisions. In the second essay, Simone Romano analyses the nature of the economic recession caused by the pandemic and indicates a number of policy areas in which government should act to tackle it. Romano insists on the centrality of the European dimension of the response. The third essay is dedicated to the debate over the digital tax, namely the taxation of high-tech giants like Facebook or Amazon. Nicola Bilotta contends that the digital tax would strengthen the fiscal capacity of governments in dire need of augmenting public spending to keep their crisis-hit economies afloat. The issue has direct transatlantic relevance as the United States has threatened retaliations – as basically all high-tech giants operating in the EU are.