Search

The COVID-19 pandemic has changed life in Europe and globally. The pandemic affects both individuals and the broader society across many domains, including physical and psychological health, the economy and general welfare. The measures taken to counteract the pandemic have significantly altered daily life and, along with the threat of contracting the coronavirus and uncertainties surrounding future developments, created a complex system of stressors with a negative impact on public mental health. This paper aims to outline the ESTSS strategy to address mental health issues related to COVID-19 and focuses on (1) trauma-informed policies, (2) capacity building, (3) collaborative research and (4) knowledge-exchange. To facilitate implementation of a trauma-informed approach and appropriate measures, ESTSS has developed a toolkit of recommendations on mental health and psychosocial assistance to be provided during the different phases of crisis and its aftermath. To promote capacity building, ESTSS offers a certification programme based on a curriculum in psychotraumatology and corresponding on-line training to the European community of mental health professionals. To assure evidence-based approaches and methods tailored to current circumstances, ESTSS has initiated a pan-European research project with international cooperation aimed at studying the mental health consequences of the pandemic, with a focus on psychological trauma and other stress-related reactions. To foster knowledge-exchange, the European Journal of Psychotraumatology (EJPT), the official journal of ESTSS, is publishing a special issue on COVID-19. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An editorial is presented on the COVID-19 vaccination campaign gets underway, and the coronavirus evolved at an unprecedented speed from a local phenomenon to a global threat, forcing governments to almost completely lock down what had been a vibrant society until then.

The permanent changes in society affect, among other, the environment. This is why environmental efficiency plays a very important role, being quantified in different forms. In our paper we have developed a composite index of ecological efficiency taking into account two dimensions, environmental pollution and resource consumption, each one being characterized by specific indicators. Thus, using this index, the aim was to evaluate and rank the level of greening of each country in Europe. Crises over time, including the health crisis caused by coronavirus, have focused to resilience, so we have highlighted whether it is significantly influenced by the ecological efficiency index. In addition, we analyzed whether ecological efficiency is related to investments in a country, financial, material and technological potential. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Based on an original protest event analysis (PEA) dataset covering 30 European countries, this paper provides three sets of results. Despite its unlikeliness due to lockdowns and social distancing measures, protest during COVID-19 has hardly been put to a halt even if, as a result of the restrictions imposed by the lockdown measures on the opportunities of public collective actions, protest occurred at significantly lower levels compared to pre-COVID-19 times, in terms of number of events and, above all, in terms of the number of participants. Moreover, protest was refocused on COVID-19-related issues, in particular on protest against the restrictions imposed by the government lockdowns, while non-COVID-19 issues, in particular economic issues, were crowded out. In addition, protest during the COVID-19-crisis also responded to highly contingent national context conditions which varied between the different regions of Europe. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The uncertainties and scale of the Covid-19 pandemic has mobilised global anxieties and insecurities, and many cultural groups have conjuncturally embedded conspiracy theories within millennial and apocalyptic thought to explain and find meaning in the pandemic. The apocalypse lends itself well to conspiratorial thinking because conceptually it is flexible enough to reflect any crisis. To this end, the global development of Covid-19 conspiracism is what the authors term 'contagious conspiracism' which is defined as viral global cultural conspiracism. The paper explores how millennialist responses to Covid-19 in various media outlets transcend academic categories of analysis and cultural boundaries between, say, religious and secular, far-right and radical left. First explored is how the crisis became embedded in established (mainly American) contemporary millennial beliefs and prophecies through selected far-right, evangelical and radical left narratives. Second, it is shown how these theories have been 'improvised' to include 5 G and also travelled to Europe and taken on geographical significance in Belfast and Berlin. Third, the authors illustrate the shared ingredients, motivations, and semiotics across apocalyptic conspiratorial Covid-19 narratives, all of which resonate with concerns about power, specifically emergent surveillance technologies, governmental abuse of power, and neoliberal capital, with divergent truths about who is blame from 5 G/vaccine theories to corporate technocapitalism. The paper concludes that these shared discourses across apocalyptic and conspiratorial Covid-19 narratives mean many of us are conspiracists and/or conspiracy theorists at some level and is therefore both revealing of the similarities and has the potential to create democratic constituencies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The coronavirus pandemic, which first impacted European societies in early 2020, has created a twofold crisis by combining a health threat with economic turmoil. While the crisis has affected all European societies very significantly, its impact varies across countries, social groups, and societal domains. In an effort to provide a first overview of the effect of the coronavirus crisis, in this editorial we discuss contributions of 58 papers published as part of this special issue. These early research papers illustrate the varied impact of the pandemic on various areas of social life. The first group of studies in this special issue analyzes the effect of the pandemic on social inequalities with respect to gender, ethnic otherness, education, and work. A second stream of research focuses on the psychological consequences of the pandemic, especially with respect to wellbeing and resilience. Thirdly, the crisis is discussed on a societal level, in regard to welfare states, social policies, and approaches to crisis governance. In a fourth line of inquiry, several studies have analyzed the impact of the pandemic on social solidarity and cohesion. A fifth strand of research is devoted to examining the role of culture and lifestyles. This review ends with a discussion of areas for future research trajectories. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The future of mega-events has never been more uncertain. The ongoing COVID-19 pandemic has introduced an unparalleled level of doubt regarding the kind of mega-events that will take place in the coming years. While the 2019 call for papers could not predict such a radical shock, this special issue arrives at a quite unique moment of reflection. Prior to 2020, cities were already questioning the traditional format of mega-events (e.g. Olympics and Expo) while other cultural mega-events have been spreading and gaining popularity, thanks in part to typically lower costs of infrastructures and venues, far more adaptable arrangements, spatial distribution and time frame for hosting. In these ways, they have already been demonstrating higher flexibility in which to respond to future health and safety constraints. When it comes to the relation to the existing city, cultural mega-events have been planned, implemented and studied far more than any other. By leveraging the richness of cultural mega-events, this special issue deepens the intersection between events and cultural heritage in particular. This introduction provides a theoretical framework that cuts across mega-event and heritage research fields. It introduces the questions and approaches of the following contributions, arguing that the nexus between mega-events and heritage is a key challenge for many cities in Europe and beyond. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Mobile applications for digital contact tracing have been developed and introduced around the world in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. Proposed as a tool to support 'traditional' forms of contact-tracing carried out to monitor contagion, these apps have triggered an intense debate with respect to their legal and ethical permissibility, social desirability and general feasibility. Based on a large-scale study including qualitative data from 349 interviews conducted in nine European countries (Austria, Belgium, France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, the Netherlands, German-speaking Switzerland, the United Kingdom), this paper shows that the binary framing often found in surveys and polls, which contrasts privacy concerns with the usefulness of these interventions for public health, does not capture the depth, breadth, and nuances of people's positions towards COVID-19 contact-tracing apps. The paper provides a detailed account of how people arrive at certain normative positions by analysing the argumentative patterns, tropes and (moral) repertoires underpinning people's perspectives on digital contact-tracing. Specifically, we identified a spectrum comprising five normative positions towards the use of COVID-19 contact-tracing apps: opposition, scepticism of feasibility, pondered deliberation, resignation, and support. We describe these stances and analyse the diversity of assumptions and values that underlie the normative orientations of our interviewees. We conclude by arguing that policy attempts to develop and implement these and other digital responses to the pandemic should move beyond the reiteration of binary framings, and instead cater to the variety of values, concerns and expectations that citizens voice in discussions about these types of public health interventions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Research on political conflict often overlooks the role of visual-based platforms like Instagram in expressing political discontent, focusing primarily on textual content from newspapers and social media. This paper examines the practicalities and challenges of conducting visual research on Instagram, particularly in the context of comparative studies. We highlight the difficulties associated with sampling representative visual content. Through a small case study, we illustrate how hashtags associated with a single country can generate multiple conflicts, using indicators developed in political protest research and contentious politics. The existence of diverse debates within and across hashtags complicates cross-country comparisons of Instagram content and conflict dynamics. To address this issue, we propose an analytical tool for cross-hashtag analysis, allowing for the assessment of degrees of conflict. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we investigated how policy rate modifications – the main instrument used by central banks to provide liquidity during the current health crisis – influenced the evolution of the exchange rate, which is a key element within macro-stabilization policies. We documented that foreign exchange markets in European countries responded asymmetrically to monetary policy interventions devoted to the encouragement of spending and the stimulation of the economy. However, this only occurred during extreme events, which is a side-effect of the monetary policy on the foreign exchange market. These results contribute to the assessment of the space for manoeuvres by monetary policymakers regarding key policy rate modifications as a response to pandemic shocks. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines empirically the impact of Covid-19 pandemic on economic sentiment in Europe. We focus on the EU-27 countries plus the UK during the period September 2019 to November 2020, before the initiation of Covid-19 vaccination, using data from Eurostat's Business and Consumers Surveys. Panel data estimates indicate that the pandemic has generated strongly declining sentiments among economic agents in Europe through the slowdown of the economy due to the imposed restrictions on movement and other controls. The risk of infection-induced mortality has played a separate role in generating pessimism directly from human psychology. The emergency social protection measures launched by governments have, on average, been effective in reducing market pessimism. However, we provide evidence suggesting that policymakers should focus more on targeted support to poor households and other disadvantaged groups of the population. Overall, our results suggest that certain structural features of economies, including poverty exposure, a large informal sector, and a high percentage of vulnerable employment as well as limited financial and informational openness, are factors that may intensify the severity of the adverse economic consequences of a pandemic. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper I attempt a novel interpretation of Brexit as a 'wicked problem'. Wicked problems are those which are unique and complex, full of internal contradictions, and defy solution, instead only creating other problems. After reviewing the lead-up to the 2016 Brexit referendum, particularly the role of immigration, the core of the paper takes the main criteria for the specification of a wicked problem and applies them to Brexit. Special attention is given to two propositions: that every wicked problem is a symptom of other problems; and that every attempted solution to a wicked problem produces irreversible consequences. Both are seen to apply to Brexit. In the conclusion, I explore 'wicked synergies' between Brexit and the coronavirus pandemic. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Coronavirus pandemic has led to restrictions on movement and workplace closures, resulting in governments offering temporary financial support to enterprises and workers. This paper evaluates a group unable to access this financial support, namely those in the undeclared economy, and possible policy responses. To identify the service industries and workers involved, a late 2019 Eurobarometer survey of undeclared work in Europe is reported. This reveals that undeclared work is particularly prevalent in the hospitality, retail and personal services sectors and identifies the population groups over-represented. Given that this undeclared workforce is now largely unable to work, it will be argued that providing access to temporary financial support, through a voluntary disclosure initiative, would be a useful initiative not only to provide the income support these enterprises and workers need but also to bring them out of the shadows and put them on the radar of the state authorities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

To what extent did the Covid-19 pandemic affect the tools, priorities and organisation of cultural policies? And did the pandemic enhance the digital aspect of these policies? This paper compares pandemic cultural policy measures in seven European countries to answer these questions. The countries all installed a plurality of mitigating measures, combining grants and subsidies, compensation of lost income, income support and financial flexibility, creating a tendency towards cultural policy turning into economic policy, fiscal policy, and labour market policy. Cultural policies have not been fundamentally challenged by the pandemic, in the sense that it has affected the essential political tools, divisions of labour, or core goals. The responses have confirmed an existing policy structure or enhanced existing developments. The importance of a state-centred or a federalist cultural policy system has not been challenged in a substantial way. Secondly there is little evidence to show a general acceleration of national digital cultural policies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper foregrounds the use of "Living Labs" as instruments for the delivery of just low carbon transformations. Living Labs are commonly understood as stakeholder-centred, iterative and open-innovation ecosystems that involve multiple forms of co-creation and engagement among different actors in a given territory. Over a period of three years, thanks to a unique pan-European action research study, three such Labs were set up in different locations in Europe -- a large North-western European city (Manchester, England), a mid-sized mountainous town in South-eastern Europe (Metsovo, Greece) and a series of rural settlements in Central Europe (Nyírbátor, Hungary). Working closely with local residents and relevant organisational stakeholders, the research teams that led the Labs undertook multiple low-carbon interventions in the homes of low-income residents, while continuously monitoring the broader impacts of intermediation practices on energy equity and sustainability across three consecutive cycles of activity. We present and discuss the results of these activities, so as to uncover the impacts of Living Labs on energy poverty both before and during the Covid-19 pandemic. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There is an urgent need to understand the consequences of the Covid-19 pandemics on older people's lives. However, conducting qualitative research is challenging, because of the shortage of guidelines and methodological research on how to recruit and interview participants during biological disasters, such as pandemics. This paper documents the procedures we adopted to recruit and interview 40 older people living in a rural area of Northern Italy that was subject to the first full lockdown in Europe. Despite the challenges arising when qualitatively researching the old age population in pandemic times, our study has shown that it is feasible to recruit and interview older people remotely. Specifically, community engagement and tailoring video-interviews according to older people's needs and ICT skills are the key aspects to consider when designing these types of studies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper follows European countries as they struggled through the first wave of the Sars-CoV-2 pandemic. We analyze when countries were confronted with the virus, how long it took until the number of new infections peaked and at what level of infections that peak was achieved via social distancing and lockdown policies. Most European countries were able to successfully end the first wave of the pandemic – defined as a two-week incidence rate smaller than 10 cases per 100,000 people. We find that countries in which the virus made significant landfall later in time enjoyed a latecomer advantage that some of these countries squandered, however, by not responding quickly enough and that an early lockdown was more effective than a hard lockdown. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of European Journal of Psychotraumatology is the property of Taylor & Francis Ltd and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

In 2013 the European Citizens' Initiative (ECI) 'Right2Water' collected 1.9 million signatures across Europe against water privatization. It became the first ever successful ECI and has built a Europe-wide movement. Right2Water sought for Europe's legal enforcement of the Human Right to Water and Sanitation (HRWS) as a strategic political tool to challenge European Union market policies. The paper examines the ECI from a social movement perspective. Although the European Commission subscribed that 'water is a public good, not a commodity', its implementation is subject to continuing politics and socio-political struggle, with growing urgency in times of the Covid-19 pandemic crisis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Within global sport, volunteering has been identified as a fundamental resource to the effective operation and continuity of operations. However, investments in, and the success of, sport volunteering is contingent on amiable socio-cultural, political, and economic conditions. In Europe, the context of this paper, the vibrancy of sport volunteering remains a concern since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. Notwithstanding the pandemic, some transnational sport networks and regional governmental partnerships have been making more dedicated investments to fortify volunteer cultures in the region. In addition, collaborative ventures are finding ways to connect sport volunteering with wider international issues to support its growth across all sectors. Here, sustainability and environmental change have provided a key issue platform for sport volunteer leverage. As the pandemic continues to confront the existence and practices of sport organisations, and specifically their ability to engage volunteers, these issues have become salient. We present a commentary of the Erasmus + Sport-funded, pan-European, sport volunteering and sustainability focused, PlayGreen consortia and its organisation members responses to the unfolding pandemic across Europe. Our commentary is guided by spatial theory and internal administration insights. The pandemic has brought new ideas and cohesion into sport volunteer communities, challenged, and changed modes of production, and led to new forms of social transformation and action vis-à-vis environmental and sustainability issues. As sport organisations continue to find viable ways of existing, the experiences within the PlayGreen consortia evidence creative potential for future volunteer engagements. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The COVID-19 outbreak and resultant economic crisis has led to governments in Europe taking extraordinary action to support citizens. Bodies such as the International Labour Organisation (ILO) recommend such measures should include targeted support for the most affected population groups. Women form one of these groups, with disproportionate impacts on their employment and economic resources already documented. Although the disruption brought about by the COVID-19 crisis has the potential to reshape gender relations for everyone's benefit, there are concerns that the crisis will exacerbate underlying gender inequalities. Though these impacts are likely to be felt globally, public policy has the potential to mitigate them and to ensure a gender-sensitive recovery from the crisis. This paper introduces a gendered lens on the employment and social policies European countries have established since the crisis, with a brief comparative analysis of short-time working schemes in four countries – Germany, Italy, Norway, and the UK. Ongoing research seeks to extend the comparative, gendered analysis of the design, access and impacts of COVID-19 employment and social policies across Europe. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, I analyze whether the COVID-19 crisis might lead to a new wave of neo-nationalism. History teaches that socio-economic crises tend to pave the way for populist nationalists to seize the moment and place themselves as saviours of the people/nation against both an external threat and the domestic elite. In previous research, I detected three waves of nativist populism, emerging into what I call neo-nationalism in the post-war era, each rising in the wake of crisis. The characteristics of the current crisis are in many ways reminiscent of those that have previously led to the rise of nativist populism, which defines much of contemporary politics in the West, and indeed around the world. It is therefore timely to contemplate whether the crisis resulting from governmental responses to COVID-19 might ignite the fourth wave of neo-nationalism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article traces the European Union (EU)'s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and implication in the Europe. In the era of global digitalisation, the right to respect private life, communication and the home has become a matter of protection. Protecting the right to privacy is a responsibility of a state which includes privacy of personal information, e.g. birth, messages, phone call and number and emails. Likewise, this study explains EU concern's about its citizens' privacy and the recent inclusion of the GDPR for the protection of natural persons. The article aims to explore individual fundamental rights and implications in the digital age, as well as cooperation data rules between companies and public bodies. At the same time, questions arise about the rightful implication of GDPR and the right to privacy of the public through protection, especially from tech companies. For validating the argument, various qualitative research methods were applied. The COVID-19 pandemic has raised a serious question over privacy rights protection by the government, which supports our findings that EU GDPR has a long road to go and have challenges. Its credibility of lawful data activities is also a matter of concern and a reliable promise by the member states and the EU. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The coronavirus epidemic (COVID19) has affected the global economy and the services sector. Quarantine measures related to travel restrictions have led to an unprecedented decline in the tourism industry with repercussions on tourism service providers, transport companies and state budgets. Travel is necessary for tourism, therefore, any factor that prevents travel can have a profound impact on the tourism industry. In the current pandemic context, the forecast in the field of tourist travel has played an important role in supporting the revival of this sector. In this study, econometric and interpretive methods were combined to predict the demand. In this study we approached a prediction model that is based on the seasonal stationary and adjustment of observed and FFT data. Experimental results show that the proposed prediction model has demonstrated a good medium-term forecast and can be used successfully in short and medium periods of time. For a certification of the exploratory evaluation of tourism forecasts there were comparatively analyzed the results obtained for three countries in south-eastern Central Europe, countries with similar natural and anthropic tourist resources (Bulgaria, Croatia and Romania). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Using survey and social network evidence from Southeast Europe, we advance the understanding of conspiracy theories and politics related to the coronavirus pandemic in three ways: (1) we show that beliefs in coronavirus conspiracy theories are related to ideological support for a nationalist vision of society and socialist vision of the economy; (2) we also show that both conspiracy believers and nonbelievers are living in bubbles of the like-minded; and (3) we use the tools of natural language processing to elucidate the unambiguous differences in the discourse related to the coronavirus used by conspiracy believers and nonbelievers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Was the 8% rise in U.S. inflation in 2021--2022 mainly caused by 2021 fiscal stimulus? This article presents evidence that 5% of the 8% rise in U.S. and European inflation was caused by two cost pushes: severe supply chain disruptions from covid and a huge rise in the cost of oil. Two percent was caused by higher wage increases to try to keep up with the 5% cost-push. One percent in Europe was caused by a natural gas price spike. U.S. fiscal stimulus in 2021 was the same as in 2020. Only 1% of the U.S.'s 8% rise was caused by 2021 fiscal stimulus. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Pandemic responses within the EU deviate from past large-scale crisis management substituting the austerity paradigm with the normalisation of generous fiscal support. Yet, traditional north-south fault lines remain. The article addresses such a puzzle systematically assessing the core-periphery divide in pandemic management and outcomes across the EU 27. The analysis highlights gaps and geographical heterogeneities across the north-south divide, refuting their sole attribution to differences in the scale of the health crisis. Conversely, we show the contribution of containment measures to heterogeneous economic outcomes across the core and periphery, which extend to the Southern Member States marginally impacted by the outbreak. Findings confirm the pandemic furthered divergences across the Member States, highlighting how the absence of austerity alone is not sufficient to enact convergence within the EU27. Supporting structural imbalances and the need for transnational solidarity, the work contributes to the debate on core-periphery relations and the future of economic integration in the context of the Conference on the Future of Europe and foreseen reform of the Stability and Growth Pact. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Thinking with four non-EU academic migrants from the global South, and their experiences of working/studying or starting to work/study during the Covid-19 pandemic, we are unravelling the current geopolitics of the internationalised higher education in the global North. Our central argument is that Covid-19 has not simply affected the national and global politics of migration, including international academic migration, but it has also worked as a magnifying glass of the historically established inequalities sustained and perpetuated by physical, biomedical and epistemic borders. Most importantly, we are not following the rather obvious theoretical route of biopolitics while analysing the internationalisation of higher education in relation to the Covid-19 health crisis and migration politics. Instead, we are looking at this geo-biopolitical and epistemic assemblage through a decolonial lens. In doing so, we want to contribute with our and our interviewees' reflections to the ongoing discussion on what currently counts as 'internationalisation' in higher education, pointing out the colonial and neoliberal foundations of it, and the possibilities of aligning it with the efforts of decolonising the university. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The European Union's response to the COVID-19 pandemic revealed changes and continuity in the structure and the functioning of the European project. In lieu of a conclusion to the Special Issue, this article discusses what those lessons tell us about how Europe responds to the following crisis. We compare European responses to the pandemic to those that followed the Russian invasion of Ukraine. We observe more differences than similarities. The same actors do not always play the central role, solidarity among Europeans is sometimes more challenging to engineer, and the requirements to make the overall project more resilient can point in different directions. Such findings show that any argument that Europe is forged through crisis is unlikely to tell us much about what Europe is or where it may be headed. In that sense, the EU is a sui generis multi-level, multi-faceted actor that can change shape in response to events. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The free movement of people (FMP) was one of the first victims of the COVID-19 pandemic in Europe. Calls for better coordination often remained unheard in the initial phase of hectic border closures and mostly resulted in soft EU recommendations. Nevertheless, most restrictions on the FMP were lifted after summer 2020 and could be largely avoided in later waves of the pandemic. We argue that the resilience of the FMP, a fundamental principle of the EU, ultimately depends on policies – borders, welfare, and health – that are still national competence and partly implemented at the regional level. We explain the resilience of the FMP and the observed variation between different border regions by the strength of pre-existing coordinative transgovernmental networks. Our analysis is based on a comparative case study of different German border regions and draws on quantitative data concerning cross-border workers and qualitative interviews with policy-makers and stakeholders. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Influenza immunization policies in Europe primarily target at-risk and vulnerable subjects. Healthcare workers (HCWs) are a key focus of vaccination campaigns. Our systematic review and meta-analysis aim to evaluate the role of the COVID-19 pandemic on influenza vaccine uptake among HCWs since the 2020/21 influenza season. Fourteen studies were included in the meta-analysis and systematic review, selected from scientific articles available in MEDLINE/PubMed, ISI Web of Knowledge, and Scopus databases between 1 January 2021 and 15 January 2023 The analysis revealed a significant relationship between influenza vaccine uptake and COVID-19 related determinants, such as willingness to receive COVID-19 vaccination, fear of COVID-19, and differentiating between influenza and COVID-19 symptoms (OR = 5.70; 95%CI = 2.08–15.60). Several studies reported higher vaccination coverages in the 2020/21 season compared to previous seasons, with VC values ranging from + 17% to + 38% compared to the 2019/20 season. The included studies identified a shift in HCWs' attitudes toward influenza vaccination, attributed to increased awareness due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Vaccine hesitancy is common among HCWs in Europe, necessitating mutual strategies across all European countries. So far, mandatory vaccination policies have shown the most potential in achieving high and sustainable influenza vaccination rates among HCWs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Advocacy is one of the core functions of public health and is a key tool for achieving Sustainable Development Goals. Public health associations play a key role in advocating for the development and implementation of strategies to prevent diseases and promote health and well-being. This study aims to map out the focus of public health advocacy carried out by selected national public health associations over 4 years, between 2018 and 2021, in order to identify gaps and strengths and support associations and professionals in their advocacy efforts. Twelve national public health associations participated in the study. Official policy documents produced between 2018 and 2021 were collected and analysed. The title and summary of the policy documents were examined line by line and coded into the main subject categories and themes. A qualitative thematic analysis was conducted. Policies were assessed from global and regional perspectives. A total of 220 policy documents were analysed. Overall, the largest number of policy documents came from high-income countries and dealt with environmental health and communicable diseases, including COVID-19, with, however, important differences among regions. In the African region, public health advocacy focused mainly on strengthening health systems; Europe and South America were mostly concerned with communicable diseases and pandemic management; and North America and the Western Pacific regions focused primarily on climate change. Limited attention was paid to international health and health as a human right in all regions. Our study showed that, especially in high-income countries, public health associations actively engage in advocacy; however, more effort needs to be devoted to implementing a more international and intersectoral approach at the global level, anchored in health as a human right and aligned with the Sustainable Development Goals. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The year 2021 was critical for European football, as the COVID-19 pandemic led to financial problems that brought back the idea of top clubs creating a European Super League (ESL). This idea has been popular in the past, but its discussion in scientific literature has generally been brief and infrequent. Seen by some authors as the salvation of the industry and by others as a threat, this is a topic that promises not to disappear any time soon. Therefore, this bibliometric review intends to identify the trends and gaps in the literature, the directions followed in each work, and the networks between authors, as well as to highlight the main contributors. Such a review will help set out a future research agenda on this topic. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Vaccine hesitancy is described by the WHO as one of the top threats to global health. The trajectory of the current COVID-19 pandemic depends upon the vaccination of a global population; therefore, barriers to routine vaccination within marginalized groups considered vaccine hesitant are of critical importance. Consistently, vaccination levels within Roma communities across Europe rate very poorly in comparison with general population coverage, and a number of measles and hepatitis outbreaks over the past 10 years have included Roma communities. This study aims to identify barriers to Roma vaccination in general with a view to informing analysis of potential low levels of vaccination within Roma communities for COVID-19. The research question explores factors and barriers affecting general vaccine (non-COVID-19 vaccine) uptake within Roma communities across Europe. This scoping review was conducted using the Arksey & O'Malley framework, complying with PRISMA-SR for Scoping Review guidelines. Using Thomson's 5A's Taxonomy, access was identified as the greatest barrier to vaccination within Roma communities. Access factors had the greatest number of references in this scoping review and were considered the most relevant in terms of increasing vaccination uptake. Important access themes identified are health system issues, socioeconomic conditions, and mobility. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Sex workers in Europe have been dramatically impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic and its associated measures. Ignored by most governments, excluded from social and economic measures put in place to protect other workers, sex workers were left to fend for themselves. The article, an abridged version of a previous report by the ICRSE, illustrates the impact of COVID-19 on sex workers by focusing on how the pandemic affected the socio-economic, health and safety conditions of sex worker communities and how they pro-actively responded to the first waves of the crisis in 2020. Based on data gathered through community research, the authors outline the specific ways in which sex workers living under different sex work legal regimes were hit by the crisis. Crucially, in countries such as France, Sweden and Ireland, where an 'End Demand' legislation is in place to supposedly 'rescue sex workers', these did not benefit from any state support. The article suggests that sex worker community organisations helped limit the spread of the virus through peer support and peer education, protecting not only sex workers' health, but society at large and showing similarities to the role of chaperones of public health sex workers had during the AIDS crisis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on working, travel and residential location patterns have attracted much commentary from scholars and practitioners interested in the future of cities and regions. Focusing on Europe, we discuss how pandemic-fuelled remote working and tourism practices have increased the demand for short-term rentals and second homes in rural/coastal areas as well as a number of desirable cities. The pandemic has accelerated pre-existing counter-urbanisation trends, with implications for housing availability and affordability in various parts of Europe. The policy challenges of regulating the use of privately-owned housing are discussed, followed by proposals for future research avenues. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of European Journal of Social Work is the property of Routledge and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Throughout Europe the most damaging consequences of the coronavirus have fallen disproportionately on older people who live in care homes. This study involves the analysis of secondary data sources relating to deaths, and related harms, in European care homes from seven countries between March and December 2020. The findings are reviewed using the framework of the European Convention on Human Rights to identify examples of human rights violations - namely the right to life, liberty and security, respect for private and family life, and prohibition of torture, and general prohibition of discrimination. A significant contributing factor to the scale and nature of deaths and harms is the abject disregard of older people's human rights. Based on the findings, the authors, a group of social work academics, call for an urgent re-examination of the role of social work in relationship to care homes and the importance of re-engaging with human rights issues for care home residents. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The COVID-19 outbreak in Europe has brought attention to EU health policy as a focal point for solidarity, particularly as it concerns access to medicines. Against the backdrop of policy proposals for EU joint procurement of medicines, this article expands our understanding of public opinion towards this particular aspect of European integration. Drawing on data from a conjoint experiment in five EU countries, the study investigates the extent to which citizens' preferences concerning alternative policy designs for EU joint procurement of medicines are either structured along a pro-EU versus anti-EU or ideological divide, or are crisis driven by the perceived COVID-19 threat. The analysis reveals that individual preferences over the design of EU risk pooling for medicines are most strongly explained by Euroscepticism, while egalitarian ideology plays only a modest role. How citizens' perceived threat of COVID-19 affects their preferences for this form of EU risk pooling is dependent on the national context. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We examine the regional mortality rates associated with the spread of Covid-19 in Europe. In particular, we analyse the potential contribution of the country's geographical and institutional features in shaping the virus's interregional spread and resulting local death rates. Our analysis is based on information from both pandemic waves from March to the end of November 2020. In a multilevel hierarchical regression estimation setting, covering information from over 600 OECD-TL3 areas, over 120 larger OECD-TL2 areas and 15 national-level areas, our findings suggest that local death rates are affected by the geographical and institutional features at the local, regional and national levels. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Existing research on media and the COVID-19 pandemic is largely based on quantitative data, focused on digital media, limited to single-country studies, and often West-centred. As such, it has limited capacity to provide a holistic account of the causes and consequences of audience engagement with COVID-19 news, or to consider the impact of systemic political and media factors. To compensate for that, we examine a large set of qualitative interviews and media diaries collected in four eastern European countries during the first wave of the pandemic. We show that changes in news consumption—including the resurgence of television and decline of print consumption—were not driven solely by audience demand for up-to-date information, but also by practical constrains of home-bound life in lockdown, and the introduction of live briefings. Our findings underscore disruption and uncertainty as key elements of audience experiences and highlight the markedly privatized and depoliticized nature of public debate in the early phase of the pandemic. We argue that the pandemic was an unpredictable, open-ended, and exhausting media event with high potential for divisiveness and polarization, especially in contexts marked by low levels of media freedom, declining democratic standards, and elite-led politicization of the crisis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Using the panel data vector autoregression (PVAR) model, this study examines the correlation between the stock market, gold price and USD exchange rate in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic in 55 Asian and 32 European countries from 11 March 2021 to 29 October 2021. The results of Granger causality test show that in Asian countries, there is a bidirectional causality between stock market and gold price. In addition, there is a unidirectional relationship between the stock market and the USD exchange rate, while the gold price and the USD exchange rate are completely independent of each other. Meanwhile, in European countries, stock market, gold price and USD exchange rate have a causal relationship at 1% significant level. The results of the impulse-response function analysis show that, in Asia, the stock market has a negative impact on the gold price and a positive effect on the USD exchange rate. In Europe, the stock market has a negative impact on the other two markets in the short term. The variance decomposition results suggest that, in Europe, the stock market return explains 2.5% for the gold price shock and 6.2% for the USD exchange rate shock from the tenth period. Meanwhile, these figures in the Asian countries are 1.6% and 3.2%, respectively. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

199 / EU Defence Ambitions and Capabilities: Can it do better in a more dangerous environment? Leaving aside the US, a natural partner and treaty ally to nearly all EU member states through NATO membership, the EU as a whole is outgunned on a number of indicators by both China and Russia, but EU capacities are nonetheless significant. Europe: Drivers of Strategic Change 186 / 2020-21 Review 189 / Britain and the EU after Brexit: How far is Brexit really "done"? In addition, the rules governing third-party participation are likely to make effective collaboration with non-EU companies, and with EU-based companies controlled by non-EU entities, difficult to achieve, as they either prevent (in the case of non-EU participants) or limit (in the case of entities controlled by non-EU participants) access to EDF funds and classified information related to these projects and control the intel-lectual-property rights generated through collaboration. [Extracted from the article]

Since the beginning of the COVID-19 epidemic, governments across Europe have attempted to prevent the spread of the disease by limiting the movement of their citizens. In this article, we analyse whether the level of compliance with social distancing measures is associated with political, economic, and demographic factors. In particular, our interests lie in two areas. First, as lockdowns have dragged on, many countries see some political resistance, often, though not always, from populist movements: are localities that support populist movements more likely to ignore social distancing measures? Secondly, economic security: do localities with higher levels of income and wealth have higher levels of social distancing? We combine anonymised movement data from people's mobile phones drawn from the Google Community Mobility surveys with subnational economic and demographic data to answer these questions. It is found that across Europe, social distancing patterns correlate strongly with populist attitudes and economic security. Supplemental data for this article can be accessed online at: http://doi.org/10.1080/01402382.2021.1917154 [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The COVID-19 crisis determined a forceful change in European policy. Despite the theoretical dominance of the mainstream, metrics other than prices were used to decide how to deal with issues such as provisioning, subsidies, and the financial measures they required. This change, which involved both policy makers and the general public, undermined the dominant view that price-centered coordination of the economy constrains socially relevant decisions. It suggests that neoliberal dominance is not robust either in terms of policy priorities or in the way it affects people's behavior. It also suggests that what a proper economic policy requires is an economic theory that does not merely describe the institutional status quo but foresees its possible change. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the midst of the Covid-19 crisis, the EU discourse on migration has acquired a humanitarian dimension that deserves investigation. The European Commission in particular has provided a discursive conceptualisation of the European human and humane approach to migration, promoting a change in the EU migration frame. Qualitative discourse analysis suggests that the European Commission's programmatic discourse is not just a coordinative discourse among policy actors, it rather aims to shape the preferences of EU policy-makers emphasising strategic ideas and principles enshrined in EU Treaties. The Covid-19 crisis could thus be a window of opportunity for the European Union to embark on a new migration governance framed within a humane approach. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The beginning of 2020 saw the global spreading of the COVID-19 pandemic, leading to a systematic closure of national borders across the world, which we refer to as the 'covidfencing' panorama. As expected, in Europe, where close to two million commuters cross national borders on a daily basis to work, this new reality has provoked significant setbacks to their lives. Based on evidence already available from several sources, this article presents some of the main impacts of the covidfencing process in the European cross-border (CB) areas. It does so by relating this process to the components of a proposed deterritorialism conceptual framework. In essence, it was possible to conclude that social related components like the sharing of health facilities and the need to work across borders show the existence of a high degree of deterritorialism in several parts of Europe. Nevertheless, more integration and deterritorialism is required everywhere, and simultaneously at the social, economic, physical and institutional levels. Crucially, covidfencing has highlighted the need for improving cross-border cooperation (CBC) with a view to mitigating persistent CB barriers and European integration processes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study provides an empirical analysis of the challenges that cruise ports in Europe were facing before the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic. COVID-19 triggered an unprecedented global health and economic crisis with severe, and potentially structural, consequences for the cruise world. In this context, knowledge of the key challenges that cruise ports need to address builds capacities for conceptualising, but also better responding, in the post-COVID-19 conditions to both pre-existing challenges and the ones produced by the pandemic. The study examines the former group of challenges. It does so analysing a survey answered by 155 cruise ports in 34 countries in the two European markets (North Europe and the Med) just before the pandemic outbreak. The survey identifies the significance of different types of challenges (operational, strategic, societal, environmental), and the hierarchy of challenges referring to the relationships between ports and cruise lines. Detailing which issues were (not) shared by the entire cruise port industry, the findings reveal that the pre-pandemic search for sustainable growth of the cruise activities hosted had led to diverging challenges in each of these two cruise markets. They also establish that port governance models do matter when it comes to the variation of the confronted challenges. These results imply that policy initiatives based on a "one size fits all" approach would provide a rather ineffective helping hand in resolving the major of the identified challenges. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The study examined the relationship between perception of COVID-19, travel risk perception and travel behaviour among travellers in the DACH region (Germany, Austria, Switzerland) – an important tourism market and, after Italy, the second region in Europe that was impacted by COVID-19. Data were collected at two points of time: the sample of the study in Period 1 (n = 1158) was collected at a critical point in time in the beginning of March 2020, when Italy was already massively affected by COVID-19; the sample of the study in Period 2 (n = 212) was collected two weeks later, when Europe has seen immense impacts and COVID-19 was declared a pandemic. Cluster analysis was performed and defined three unique clusters in both periods with distinctive characteristics. In addition, results revealed a significant increase in risk perception of COVID-19, travel risk perception and travel behaviour over a short period of time. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article, primarily focused on Europe, charts some of the momentous transformations in bordering practices, migration and global mobility that have been sparked by the new coronavirus pandemic. In a first part it argues that since the onset of the pandemic, the enduring 'global mobility apartheid' which uses citizenship and visa restrictions to police the differential access to mobility founded on race and class, has been supplemented by a fluctuating 'sanitary apartheid', seeking to separate populations designated as at risk of Covid-19 infection from those designated as Covid-free. While these logics are distinct, where states have conflated them, we have seen eruptive and mutating border violence. In a second more normative part the article seeks to rethink the demand for freedom of movement in the context of the pandemic, arguing that allowing migrants who today are illegalised to move in safe and legal ways is also the condition to implement sanitary measures to protect the health of migrants and sedentary populations alike. Adopting a mobility justice approach, the article also argues that the excessive mobility of the privileged through air travel that has been a major factor in spreading the virus and contributes to ecological destruction should be limited. Ultimately this article calls for re-thinking the politics of (im)mobility in the context of the pandemic as part of the process of transformation towards a more just and sustainable world. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]