Regional Impacts of Covid-19 in Europe: The Costs of the New Normality

This paper discusses the effects of the Covid-19 pandemic on growth of European regions. The impact is measured as a difference between a “New Normality” scenario, imposed by Covid, for the period 2021-2030 and a Reference scenario, whereby Covid-19 did not take place. Scenarios are obtained through the MAcroeconomic, Sectoral, Social, Territorial (MASST4), built by the authors, and able to generate regional growth scenarios for regions (NUTS2) in EU member states (UK included) on the basis of the interaction bewteen macroeconomic elements and local specificities. Some EU Countries and regions will actually be capable of bouncing back and show remarkable resilience. Other regions, instead, register a high cost in terms of missed growth.