Reviving the European economy (11/05/20)

By: Nina Hoppmann
Created: 11 May 2020 - 07:05
Updated: 11 May 2020 - 08:05

How can we revive the European economy by targeting specific sectors and consumer spending?

This was the question for the meeting of the European Alliance Against Coronavirus on 11 May 2020. Delphine Chilese-Lemarinier from Edenred presented the idea of the social voucher. Social vouchers are social benefits attributed to workers by their employers during the working day. They carry the right to access goods or services that improve their working conditions and facilitate their work-life balance, thus boosting the local economy. Services can include food, transport, childcare, household services, leisure and culture. In light of the COVID-19 pandemic, social vouchers are recognised as a tool to help people in need. Furthermore, they can support the local economy as merchants and service providers have more regular revenue, and can be used as a stimulus from the public policy for sustainability. 

Social vouchers targeted spendings EU recovery 110520.pdf

To boost local economy, communify, a global marketplace, was created. Pablo Fernández del Castillo, Commonomia, explained that on communify you have options to build a social and economic model oriented to people. It is activated in different territories through local nodes and connectors, and makes it possible for local businesses to compete with big companies. The platform uses a complementary currency, in addition to Euros, to create a complementary economic flow of transactions in areas not normally covered by conventional monetary operations.

To what extent are these examples feasible for the reviving of the local economy? What other ideas do you have? 


Replies
11 May 2020
List of countries supporting social vouchers

Dear Delphine, would you share here the link to the webpage / document where we could find the list of countries supporting social vouchers, and ideally also know more about how they do it?

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