How Europe can sustain Russia sanctions

By Ana Palacio, Silvia Merler, Francesco Nicoli and Simone Tagliapietra

Russian President Vladimir Putin’s decision to invade Ukraine is a dramatic wake-up call for Europe. The European Union can no longer be a passive player in global affairs. It must reinforce its own security structure within the broader context of NATO.

The COVID-19 crisis offers important lessons in this regard. The intuition behind Europe’s response to the pandemic was that a common, symmetric, external shock to economic policymaking called for common, internally coherent, and consensual solutions. This translated into a political agreement to create a centralized spending initiative financed with funds raised by the European Commission. The new Recovery and Resilience Facility provided EU member states with the means – including through fiscal transfers – to respond to the health crisis and its economic consequences.

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