EU Political Agenda of COVID-19 Crisis: Mechanisms and Financial Instruments to Mitigate the Economic Effects of the Pandemic in Newspapers ‘El País’ and ‘El Mundo’

Abstract

With approximately one fifth of the world population in blockade, the COVID-19 has radically changed indi­viduals’ way of life. The virus has in­fected million people and more than 200 countries (Worldometer’s COV­ID-19 data). But the effects of the virus go far beyond its biological capacity to cause disease. Beginning in the city of Wuhan, China, it rapidly spread across national borders, and has drawn at­tention to the porous and interconnect­ed world in which we live. The econom­ic results from the lockdown measures put the question of the European Un­ion project. This article intends to an­alyse how the press in Spain, one of the Eurozone countries most affected by COVID-19, reflected the decisions of the EU (mechanisms and financial instruments) to mitigate the economic effects. The corpus of analysis includes articles published by the newspapers ‘El Pais’ and ‘El Mundo’. The analytic peri­od starts on March 1 and ends on April 24, the day after the European Council approved the Economic Recovery Fund. The results show that the published news reflects the recommendations and decisions of the EU institutions, framing the mechanisms and financial instruments into coordinated Econom­ic Strategy from EU, so essential to the economic recovery of Member States. Keywords: European Union, COV­ID-19, political agenda, Spanish news­paper, content analysis.