This lecture’s principal purpose is to chart the route towards sustainable European integration through the lessons drawn from the nexus between cross-country COVID-19 pandemic response effectiveness and economic inequalities. Given the vast inequalities in initial capital and labour endowments among EU countries, the European single market generates unequal labour exchange and differences in social labour recognition. The latter leads to the systemic fostering of inequalities between the capital-abundant West and the less-developed East. Even though the eastern countries are catching up, this process is slow, far from over and hindered by the persisting unequal relations which enable the West to exploit the East.

This lecture aims to provide a compelling framework to support a progressive idea of European unity by showing that the existing inequalities contradict the implementation of the admirable European values of equality, solidarity and cohesion. Through the prism of European affairs, the tension between two types of solidarity is exposed; that of national public systems and that of supranational solidarity, the core value underlying the European social project.

Current developments show that continuing on a path stemming from vast differences in available resources exerts and will continue to exert an enormous challenge for European cohesiveness. To tackle this crisis in an orderly fashion and secure post-COVID European sustainability, policymakers must realise that prioritising market freedoms ahead of societal necessities renders a disservice to both. Consequently, this lecture will demonstrate that the COVID pandemic experience mandates abandoning nation-centred decision-making and demands rethinking European values in a conceptual and practical sense.