This paper takes a broadly positive view of the policies and institutional developments implemented to manage the pandemics and its aftermath: the European Union (EU) and the eurozone have managed to bounce back from the crisis and embark on a long-term investment programme which, despite its inevitable shortcomings, is succeeding in meeting its goals. But the EU has also had its share of failures. The disappointment of the European Stability Mechanism’s (ESM) dedicated pandemic credit line for healthcare expenditure demonstrates the need to reorganize the assistance provided by European institutions to member states. Above all, resistance to a perennation of the NGEU programme or, more generally, to the creation of borrowing and spending capacity at European level, coupled with a very disappointing reform of the Stability and Growth Pact, continues to pose the problem of creating the fiscal space needed to meet the EU’s future needs, whether in terms of industrial and transition policies, macroeconomic stabilization, or the provision of global public goods such as health care and education. Finally, the nature of the inflationary shock has shown that coordination of macroeconomic and structural policies is necessary to cope with multidimensional shocks, which raises the question of the anachronistic nature of the ECB’s single mandate on price stability.

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