“The COVID-19 pandemic and associated mitigation measures caused a major shock to the European and global economy in the first two quarters of 2020. The European Commission’s Summer 2020 Economic Forecast (European Commission, 2020d) projects the EU economy (euro area economy) to contract sharply by 8.3% (euro area 8.7%) in 2020, and to grow by 5.8% (euro area 6.1%) in 2021 as economic activity normalises, helped by policy support.
One important question is how the economic impact of the COVID-19 pandemic will spill over to the European PE/VC markets, potentially restricting the funding for technology and innovation. In turn, this would prove detrimental to Europe’s competitiveness, including its ability to pre-emptively address the risk of future pandemic spreads, similar systemic shocks and reduced EU autonomy in key strategic sectors (e.g. foregone innovation, acquisitions of EU companies by non-EU groups).”
