Daniel Fortin, editor-in-chief at Les Echos, speaks every day in the 7am newspaper to enlighten you on THE economic fact of the day.

Today, he is interested in the slowdown in stock markets in recent days in the face of the progression of the Delta variant and the reinstatement of health measures in certain European countries.

After the euphoria of the last few weeks on the rebound of the economy it is a cold shower, the European stock markets retreated yesterday, in question, the Delta variant of the coronavirus which threatens to revive the epidemic in the world.

Yes and if the rosy scenario of a global recovery had been written too quickly, this is the question which dominates today in the trading rooms, you said it, yesterday the Paris stock exchange fell by 2%, all European places have retreated, same thing on Wall Street, there are still two weeks we were swimming in full euphoria, the only fear was a new escape of the virus because of a variant then said Laurence Boone, the chief economist of The OECD well this escape is happening, for two months the epidemic has spread in about fifteen countries and we rediscover, on this occasion a figure that shivers down the spine of 80% of the world population. today is not vaccinated

Does this mean that the rebound in the global economy is already over before it has even started.

No, we are not there yet, for the moment the economists have not revised their forecasts downwards, I remind you that growth should reach 4.8% in the euro zone this year according to the figures provided this week. by the Brussels Commission, next year the rebound would be 4.5%, today the largest economies remain well oriented and no one imagines a vast reconfinement that would bring production down again, despite the strong increase in contaminations the intensive care units of hospitals are not overwhelmed so for the moment it is holding but no one is able to say where we will be at the end of the summer

Europe seems to react in a dispersed manner to this new attack of the pandemic.

Yes, you are right, we can see a clear line of divide emerging between countries seeking to revive their tourism sector such as Portugal or Greece, less looking at the conditions of access to their territory and other countries such as Germany which adopt more severe measures, yet we had established a health pass supposed to impose the same rule for everyone but national selfishness is taking over again and this cacophony, too, not reassuring for the populations, can ultimately damage the economy.