Forecasters at the European Commission have revised their calculations and, according to them, it will be necessary to wait until 2023 for the economy to return to its 2019 level, before the virus crisis.

Activity should recover by only 4.2% next year and then by 3% in 2022. Nicolas Barré takes stock of a current economic issue.

How will the economy be doing in 2021?

Beyond the immediate fog, we are beginning to see trends emerging.

Forecasters at the European Commission have revised their calculations and, according to them, it will be necessary to wait until 2023 for the economy to return to its 2019 level, before the virus crisis.

This is to say if this microorganism will have had mega-consequences.

The economy will have lost four years.

But above all, the scenario that we could believe so far no longer holds.

We were hoping for a V-shaped recovery, that is to say a very strong rebound next year after a very strong recession this year.

And this will not be the case?

No, after a 7.8% drop in economic activity in 2020 in the euro zone, experts in Brussels no longer anticipate such a rapid rebound at all.

Activity should recover by only 4.2% next year and then by 3% in 2022. This is why it will be necessary to wait until 2023 to erase the economic losses of the Covid.

Why is this recovery slower than expected?

Because of the second wave.

We had hoped that this crisis would be a "one shot", and now we take a second blow to the head.

We will therefore necessarily take longer to recover.

Nicolas Barré nevertheless wishes to bring a downside: the experts in Brussels predict a scenario a little better than the European average for France.

Our economy has suffered more this year but suddenly it should rebound more next year with growth of 5.8%.

We console ourselves as best we can.

This economic scenario reinforces the urgency of the European recovery plan.

Unfortunately, it is not moving forward.

Yes or so very slowly.

On Thursday, the employers' organizations of the largest European countries such as the French Medef, the German BDI and the Italian Confindustria launched an appeal for this recovery plan to be launched urgently.

Because we have been witnessing for weeks a standoff between the European Council, which brings together the Member States, and Parliament.

The latter demands that countries which do not respect the rule of law do not receive European funding.

MEPs are targeting Poland and Hungary.

And so they were blocking the stimulus plan until now as long as this condition was not written in stone.

A compromise was finally found on Thursday.

It will allow progress to be made in implementing this European recovery plan.

France expects 40 billion and we really need it.