The highest inflation rate in 30 years Will the crisis cause European revolutions?

The economies of European countries are facing record levels of inflation that they have not seen in 30 years. This comes at a time when the Union is experiencing unprecedented social tension, with the effects of inflation added to it, to form a protest bomb that threatens the governments of those countries.

The inflation rate in the euro area during the month of November was 4.9% (Others)

One of the most important economic risks caused by the current health crisis is the high levels of inflation globally, especially within the European economies, while a new report indicates that the countries of the Union are facing a new wave of high levels of inflation, which they have not experienced in thirty years.

The inflation rate in the euro area during the month of November reached 4.9%, which is a record for the region during the last three decades. While it was negative 0.3% during the general closure period in 2020, it gradually increased with the easing of health measures, reaching 4.1% last October, with expectations that it will continue in this trend in the coming months.

This comes amid a wave of violent protests in most European countries against the new closure measures imposed by countries to confront the new mutator of the Corona virus. Protests also have social and economic roots, the severity of which may be exacerbated by the economic conditions that are moving towards tightening the screws on the purchasing power of the European citizen.

Record levels of inflation

According to reports from the European Central Bank, inflation in the eurozone last November reached 4.9%. While the countries of the Union that recorded the highest percentages were Lithuania with 9.3%, Estonia with 8.4%, Belgium with 7.1% and Germany with 6%, and at a lower level, Spain with 5.6% and France with 3.4%.

European experts expect these rates to continue to rise over the coming months, contrary to what the European Bank previously stated that the matter is a “passing cloud”, as Eric Dorr, a French economist, said in his speech to the daily “Le Monde”, that “many elements tell us that High rates of inflation are not temporary.

Quoting the same source, the French economist Matthew Blanc attributed this rise to the rise in fuel prices, explaining that "more than half of the price hikes in France are due to the rise in energy prices, and they contribute to our reaching record levels faster than expected." In the same context, data from the European Union Statistics Office "Eurostat" showed that the rise in inflation was driven by high energy prices, tax increases and growing price pressures as a result of supply bottlenecks that limit industrial production, especially in the automobile industry.

On Monday, Spanish Central Bank Governor Pablo Hernandez de Cos warned against any "premature withdrawal of monetary stimulus", coinciding with the publication of the European Commission's results of its survey, which showed that confidence in the economic conditions in the euro area declined last November, under pressure from a deteriorating confidence in the economy. consumers.

Is Europe witnessing an explosion of protest?

In view of this reality, which threatens the European purchasing power to descend to its lowest levels, observers are likely that the streets of these countries will witness new protests in addition to what they have been experiencing during the last days of protest against the imposition of new precautionary measures that also have apparent social and economic roots.

In France, for example, violent protests erupted in the islands of Guadeloupe and Martinique against the imposition of the "health passport" on workers in the health and social services sectors. The government is responsible to the victims of the pesticide chlordecone.

In Germany as well, union activities are beginning to boil over, demanding an increase in salaries due to the weakening of purchasing power caused by inflation. A request that the government answered with a slight increase of 0.9%, which the French economist Eric Dore does not consider capable of ending this ferment, because he does not imagine that “the weakening of purchasing power caused by inflation will pass without new demands for an increase in salaries.”

This is in addition to the possibility that these economic conditions will contribute to reviving the waves of protests that the world, Europe in particular, has known, throughout 2019. In this regard, the Belgian sociologist Geoffrey Bleiers mentions, in his study “the pandemic as a battlefield”, that “the health pandemic has devoted The social problems that were the subject of the protests of the period prior to their occurrence,” and that “these protests can return strongly in the post-general closure stage.”

In the same context, the “Carnegie Institution” predicted in a study published last year, that “with the painful economic effects caused by the pandemic, and exposing the great imbalance in governance, the area of ​​popular anger began to escalate, which will be expressed in large-scale protests that will occur in the months following the lifting of measures. precautionary."