INTERVIEW
Rather save the economy, or save people? In recent days, many public statements about the coronavirus epidemic may have seemed clumsy, to worry more about the former than the latter. The former director general of the World Trade Organization, Pascal Lamy, did not entertain any ambiguity on Europe 1 on Saturday evening. "We are facing a humanitarian and social crisis before being faced with an economic crisis. The urgency is to save lives, avoid suffering and especially for the elderly and the weakest, "he said. "In these conditions, purely economic considerations, it goes into the background."
>> LIVE - Coronavirus: France in stage 3, non-essential businesses closed
Pascal Lamy does not underestimate the impact of the health crisis on the world economy. Growth could be severely cut, between -0.5 and -1.5%. "Even if, for the moment, what we are seeing is that China is leaving", this decline remains very significant. But "we are in a context that looks more like a war than an economic crisis," insists the former director general of the WTO.
"The invoice will be for later"
According to him, "the problem of public authorities is to navigate between avoiding the saturation of health systems, because this could create panic, and not completely block the economy". However, it is absolutely necessary to privilege the first option, affirms Pascal Lamy, who welcomes the "opening of the gates" decided by certain governments, like France or Germany. Measures like "taking partial unemployment into account through public finances" appear to him essential, even if costly. "There will be an invoice of course, but the invoice will be for later. If we managed things more carefully, it would be a big mistake for now."
>> Watch Wendy Bouchard's Big Journal in replay and podcast here
Could this health crisis structurally influence the world economy, as the 2008 crisis may have done? Perhaps, but according to Pascal Lamy, we should not expect the interdependence of national economies with each other to disappear. "This interdependence evolves, changes, it will change on the occasion of this coronavirus crisis. [But] we are not going towards a demondialization, rather towards a globalization organized a little differently", he anticipates.