Social justice

The coronavirus epidemic is subsiding, but the war is not won yet, Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis said in a televised message this evening, thanking the Greek people for their trust and discipline and calling on them to continue to respect restrictive measures.

Social security experts and the government are having to consider nightmare scenarios with unemployment above 20 percent and a recession of close to 12 percent once the coronavirus pandemic has subsided.

Car sales in Greece have now sunk back to where they were at the height of the country's economic crisis, as the appearance of the coronavirus, and especially the implementation of strict measures over the latter half of March, have led the market into a nosedive.

The number of newly-registered unemployed in Bulgaria since the beginning of the state of emergency until now is 72,000, but 11,000 have already found a new job, this country's Minister of Labor and Social Policy Denitsa Sacheva announced.

As people in Greece count their fourth stay-at-home week, they are starting to realize that the social distancing conditions may last longer than they had imagined. In this unprecedented situation, personal choice has a higher significance than governmental rules. The role of the individual as part of a group has never been more evident and more crucial.

About 3,000 people per day lose their jobs and register in the unemployment offices across the country since the introduction of the coronavirus state of emergency, data of the Employment agency showed on April 6.

Unemployment in the eurozone fell to a 12-year low in February, the month before coronavirus containment measures began to be introduced widely across Europe.
The jobless rate was 7.3 percent in the 19 countries sharing the euro currency, the lowest level since March 2008, European Union statistics office Eurostat said on Wednesday.

Town mayors and mid-level politicians are still getting away with hate speech and discrimination against Roma communities in three Balkan EU states, despite the bloc's commitment to minority rights.

The shutdown of many US companies caused by the pandemic from the coronavirus has caused a huge wave of unemployment, rising to 3.3 million last week, the largest ever recorded. This was reported by the Ministry of Labour, cited by AFP.

The increase is up from 281,000 unemployment applications in the previous week and breaks the previous record of 695,000 set in October 1982.

The National Agency for Employment (ANOFM) is prepared to pay furlough indemnities for up to 1 million persons, said the president of the institution, Victor Picu, in an interview for AGERPRES.