Fighting Inequality through COVID-19 Recovery

The COVID-19 pandemic has exacerbated existing inequalities within the EU and abroad. Throughout the crisis, a great transfer of wealth towards the 1% has been observed – with billionaires like Amazon’s Jeff Bezos’ net worth nearly doubling in 2020 and reaching $188 billion. Meanwhile, unemployment is rising, and austerity measures have weakened many sectors including the educational, healthcare, sports, hospitality, tourism and cultural sectors.

It is more necessary than ever to guarantee that inequality between different parts of Europe does not grow further with the crisis. Every employee has the right to enjoy fair working conditions, regardless of the type and duration of their contract. Through the pandemic, we have seen people reconceptualising the idea of work and its relationship with life, as well as interesting experiments with the 4-day work week and emergency basic income as well as other forms of Universal Basic Income (UBI).

How do we ensure a just recovery and work towards a truly social Europe, that cares for all people? And how do we ensure that no one is left behind in a post-Pandemic Europe?

As the Greens, we are working on ensuring that the social impacts of this crisis are reduced to a minimum.  In addition to the financial stimulus, we have been demanding that the EU and its Member States guarantee further social policies to protect their citizens, in particular younger workers, whose rights were already weakened by austerity policies and the 2008 financial crisis. We also advocate for national experiments on Universal Basic Income and call for working-time reduction schemes and a 32-hour work week to be promoted in order to redistribute work among more people.