Welfare Reform in Post-COVID-19 Europe: New Thinking for a Post-Crisis World by Elina Lepomaki and Enzo Weber (1/2021).
“Crises are the handmaidens of change, and few moments demonstrate this more than the recent turmoil brought on by COVID-19, social distancing and economic lockdown.
For starters, the crisis clearly showed the necessity of having a good social-welfare system; workers from countries with good systems were no more or less immune to redundancies or the virus; but much of their pain was mitigated by effective state assistance and well-timed benefits which brought aid at moments that were crucial to them.
But the crisis also exposed the gaping holes in Europe’s social safety net. Across Europe, most workers and employees are entitled to short-time working allowance and unemployment benefits, both of which were heavily used to buffer the effects of the crisis. However, large gaps in coverage became apparent for any work that deviated from this norm. In many countries, the self-employed and micro-business owners – an increasingly large segment of the modern workforce – were not covered at all by the standard system. Many got into serious financial difficulties. Some managed to hold on to their businesses thanks to hard work and difficult decisions. But the loss of income and the strain on families and the employees those businesses support could be immense…”
