Minding the Gaps: Solidaristic Transfers and Burden-Sharing in the European Union and its Member States’ Pandemic Response

Abstract

The paper offers a hitherto-lacking comprehensive appraisal of solidaristic transfers by European Union Member States (EUMS) during the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic. These transfers include bilateral assistance, collective burden-sharing on the EU level, and even external EU aid. The article uses data on inter-EUMS solidarity actions collected by the European Solidarity Tracker (EST), a widely referenced dataset on pandemic-related actions of solidarity. It cleans this data to address its deficiencies, including by filtering out symbolic and tokenistic actions, to focus on instances of truly meaningful assistance between EUMS. The EST is complemented by two further sets of data: an overview of EU-level measures, as examples of institutionalized and institutionally enabled forms of solidarity; and, given the global connectedness of the EU, data on pandemic assistance to developing countries. Based on this broad understanding of solidaristic transfers, the EU’s response is found to have been significant but insufficient overall to fill the gaps in pandemic response. The gaps identified have inevitably fed into the pandemic, contributing to permissive conditions for its resurgence. EU-level measures mattered, but practical manifestations of bilateral solidarity between EUMS have been haphazard. Furthermore, while the EU increased its external health and other development aid considerably during 2020, this by no means made for a well-allocated or adequately resourced pandemic response globally.