Quote du Jour | De wereld na het coronavirus

Het einde van het kantoor

Many businesses are not expected to reopen once the crisis passes — leaving much unoccupied office space. Others may allow their employees to continue working from home and opt to save cash by taking advantage of more flexible co-working spaces.

De ondergang van het restaurantbedrijf

It’s hard to imagine Europe not returning to its culture of eating out and open-air cafés. But even when the lockdowns are over, the experience of China shows that people are very reluctant to return to dining out.

Verkorting van de voedselketen

“We have to have our own food, produced on our fields, by our own farmers, and we have to take better care of local markets, shorten those supply chains,” (EU Commissaris voor Landbouw Wojciechowski)

Verandering van eetgewoontes

“Our expectation is that hopefully the consumers are going to regain some of the respect for food that previous generations had,” (Mette Lykke, the CEO of Too Good To Go, an app that aims to reduce food waste)

Betere bescherming van zzp’ers in de digitale economie (een basisinkomen?)

Governments will have to rethink social protections and labor rights for new kinds of work, especially as the newly laid-off turn to platforms for income. “There is going to be an increase of online work, but it won’t all be of good quality and with enough protection, especially not in times of shock,” said Anna Thomas, director of the Institute for the Future of Work.

Meer online bestellingen bij de supermarkt

This trend will continue when the crisis is over, said Christian Verschueren, director general of EuroCommerce, a trade body. “If we learned one thing through this [crisis, it] is that digital transformation has been accelerated and will be accelerated,” he said.

Meer vervoer per fiets

“Moving around on bike or on foot is … the only real pandemic-resilient mobility there is,” a coalition of activists wrote in an open letter to German Transport Minister Andreas Scheuer earlier this month. “The changes have to be permanent to be an improvement,” said Morten Kabell, a former mayor for environmental affairs in Copenhagen and co-CEO of the European Cyclists’ Federation

Vernieuwing van de ruimtelijke ordening in steden

The Mayor of Paris Anne Hidalgo proposed turning the French capital into a collective of self-sufficient communities with everything — groceries, parks, gyms, health centers, schools and workplaces — just a 15-minute walk away from every resident’s doorstep.

Openbaar vervoer in de rode cijfers

Even once things start to gradually return to normal, decreased use of public transport will mean services will run way beneath profitability. Local authorities will have to provide major subsidies to maintain transport links, or risk the mothballing of tram and subway routes.

Minder vliegreizen

Companies will be able to evaluate closely how productivity under lockdown compares — and whether the millions spent on corporate travel are really worth it.

Veranderingen op luchthavens

Airports have long been countries’ gatekeepers, but the pandemic may require them to be de facto doctors too. The need for social distancing will also present challenges. Maintaining that in lines at security and immigration will require more space and different layouts.

Grote technologiebedrijven opereren als publieke diensten

In times of crisis, people typically turn to government authorities for help. With COVID-19, they’ve also turned to Big Tech. Facebook has teamed up with national public health agencies to keep people informed; Google has peppered search results with the latest updates on how to keep safe; Amazon has become an arm of many countries’ postal services, as people rely on the e-commerce giant for everything from groceries to toilet paper.

Privacyrechten blijvend aangetast

“Many short-term emergency measures will become a fixture of life. That is the nature of emergencies. They fast-forward historical processes,” wrote Israeli philosopher Yuval Noah Harari in late March

De EU krijgt gezondheid als beleidsgebied erbij

More than 6,000 people, including former prime ministers, commissioners and a Parliament president, signed a petition arguing that it is time to make health a shared EU competence, and give the bloc the ability to act as a federal state in health emergencies.

Het Europees Parlement gaat verder digitaliseren

MEPs saw the experience of going entirely digital as a way to improve their relationship with the outside world. Nathalie Loiseau, a French MEP from the centrist Renew Europe group, said she will participate in a videoconference with MPs in France, “something we had struggled to put in place in normal times.”

De EU moet eerst intern orde op zaken stellen

“What we have understood is that first we need to be less dependent and to have our economy back on track, then we can really play a role as a geopolitical actor,” argued a senior EU diplomat.

Als de euro niet uit elkaar valt worden we sterker

If the crisis doesn’t end up breaking the euro, then there is hope, said Guntram Wolf, the director of the Brussels think tank Bruegel. “If we can pick out a proper growth strategy and issue some joint debt, which would be sustainable on the side of stronger and weaker countries, then the EU can get out of the crisis strengthened — not weakened.”

Experts krijgen (weer) meer invloed

Less mistrust in established, academic, informed opinion. “After the COVID crisis, it’s reasonable,” wrote former Bank of England Governor Mark Carney in the Economist, “to expect people to demand … more heed to be given to the advice of scientific experts.”

 

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