Culminating more than a decade of crises in Europe, the Covid19 pandemic has opened an unprecedented window of opportunity for institutional and policy change, not only at the 'reactive' level of emergency responses, but also to tackle more broadly the many socio-political challenges caused or exacerbated by Covid19.
Building on this premise, the new project REGROUP (Rebuilding Governance and Resilience out of the Pandemic), a Horizon Europe funded project, aims to:
- provide the European Union with a body of actionable advice on how to rebuild post-pandemic governance and public policies in an effective and democratic way;
- map the socio-political dynamics and consequences of Covid19;
- produce a normative evaluation of the pandemic.
The main objective is to map and analyse the social and geographical conflict lines generated in Europe by the Covid19 pandemic. In particular, the team will investigate the impact of Covid19 and ensuing economic crisis on social groups and member states. They will analyse conflicting positions on, for example, lock-downs, measures of economic support, increasing public debt burden, and policies of equipment and vaccine distribution, through the lenses of group and country exposure to health and economic risk.
REGROUP pursues a multi-level (national, supranational, international) and multi-sphere (political, societal, ideational, digital) research approach. It is guided by three overarching analytical themes: reordering, risk and resilience.
The project is conducted by a consortium of 13 international institutions. The project is designed to achieve a policy, societal, and scientific impact, achieved via a multi-pronged dissemination and communication strategy.
This new project, led by the University of Groningen, will run from 2022 to 2025. The European Governance and Politics Programme (EGPP) is involved in the project leading a Work Package on 'Old and new cleavages in pandemic times'.