2020 wasn’t easy to live through — but it’s certainly easy to summarize: It was the year of the coronavirus.
In March, people around the world retreated into their homes and life as we knew it ground to a halt. The world has remained in this dystopian reality since, with over 1.7 million deaths from COVID-19, lockdown measures unheard of in peacetime, and chaos in health systems and treasuries as governments struggle to handle the pandemic.
Just in case a deadly new virus wasn’t enough to keep things busy, there was also Brexit, a huge EU budget-and-recovery package and a U.S. election.
Here’s our look back over a year that felt horrifically slow and yet dizzyingly fast, as seen through the lens of our most popular stories of 2020.
20. Europe’s coronavirus lockdown measures compared
Unprecedented times called for unprecedented measures. As the coronavirus swept across Europe and EU countries scrambled to implement measures to halt it, people were desperate to know what they could do, where — and how their freedoms and restrictions compared with their neighbors’.
19. Artists draw life under coronavirus
What does life — and the world — look like when you can’t step outside your front door without fear of catching the 2020 plague? We asked dozens of artists to draw the new normal and they delivered, capturing the fear and uncertainty of life in a pandemic, as well as the heartbreak of our mundane new reality.
18. Corona-snitches thrive in lockdown Europe
The walls have ears — and eyes, and receipts for dates and times. During the first wave of the pandemic, as governments across Europe were introducing measures to reduce the spread of the virus, an army of snitches stood to attention and picked up their phones to report rule-breakers.
17. 9 things to know about Antony Blinken, the next US secretary of state
A collective outpouring of relief reverberated around the Continent after Joe Biden was declared the victor in the 2020 U.S. presidential election. But after the initial euphoria, folks wondered: Who’ll be tasked with reinvigorating the transatlantic relationship, after four years of frost and outright hostility? Enter Antony Blinken, a man with deep ties to Europe.
16. Brexit: What just happened (in September) and what comes next, explained
In September, the sense of “WTF is going on with Brexit?†was back with a vengeance as the U.K. government announced it would break international law by implementing its Internal Market Bill, which would override parts of the Withdrawal Agreement — which Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s own government had signed with the EU just a year earlier. We laid out what was going on, and where the EU and U.K. would be going next.
15. Brits in the EU to get common residence card
Sure, the U.K. voted Leave in the 2016 EU referendum. But what about those who’ll stay here post-Brexit? About 1.2 million Brits live in the EU, and the European Commission decided that from 2021 they should have a simple and uniform residence card to show for it, as POLITICO scooped in February.
14. 6 ways coronavirus is changing the environment
From (frequently misleading) social media posts touting nature healing itself during the pandemic, to the hope the global slowdown would help lower emissions, much was written about the impact of the coronavirus on the environment. POLITICO separated the reality from hope and hype.
13. The death of the city
As the pandemic hit, record numbers of people shifted to telework — and fled urban centers, seeking respite outside the big smoke. But while reports of the death of the city may have been exaggerated, urban living is certainly undergoing a revolution.
12. How Europe failed the coronavirus test
In early April, Europe was the epicenter of the pandemic and the question being asked was how its leaders let things get so bad. Complacency, overconfidence and lack of preparation were the main factors that emerged from POLITICO’s conversations with diplomats, lawmakers, public health authorities and crisis managers across the bloc.
11. Italian doctors on coronavirus frontline face tough calls on whom to save
In March, as COVID-19 overwhelmed Lombardy’s health system, Italian doctors were forced to make unfathomable choices on who lives and who dies. A scenario which, just a few weeks earlier, would have been impossible to imagine in one of the EU’s largest economies.
10. Coronavirus in Europe: Live data tracker
This was the year epidemiologists and statisticians were thrust front-and-center into public consciousness. POLITICO kept track of the pandemic, by the numbers. The counters are still rolling as we head into 2021.
9. Merkel rebuffs Trump invitation to G7 summit
As the coronavirus overwhelmed the U.S. and Donald Trump’s reelection campaign, the American president needed to project confidence and competence. Enter an in-person G7 meeting at Camp David, to which Trump sought to invite the world’s big political beasts. But as POLITICO first reported, it was a “nein†from Angela Merkel. Officially, the pandemic got the blame, but German officials also mentioned the chancellor’s concern that Trump was seeking to use the meeting for an election-year photo-op. Trump took the rejection about as well as could be expected.
8. How Europe is responding to the coronavirus pandemic
How many coronavirus tests did each European country administer? What were the travel restrictions? Were schools closed? POLITICO had the guide to all that and more.
7. The Austrian ski town that spread coronavirus across the Continent
You may not have heard of the Tyrolean village of Ischgl before March, but it became famous for all the wrong reasons after tourists who hit the après-ski scene returned to their homes across Europe — and took the coronavirus with them.
6. Hungary no longer a democracy: report
In a sobering report on the state of democracy in 29 countries from Central Europe to Central Asia, the NGO Freedom House made a big call: Under Viktor Orbán’s Fidesz ruling party, Hungary had backslid from its previous status as a “semi-consolidated democracy†and had become a “hybrid regime.†The report went down like a ton of bricks in Budapest.
5. Coronavirus: France’s ‘strange defeat’
Most governments made significant missteps during the first wave of the pandemic, and France was no exception. But unlike citizens of other countries, the French didn’t cut their president, Emmanuel Macron, any slack.
4. How Portugal became Europe’s coronavirus exception
Despite having more elderly citizens than most other European nations and a critically underfunded and poorly equipped health care system, Portugal managed the first wave of the pandemic exceptionally well, as POLITICO reported in this piece. Alas, fast-forward a few months to the second wave, and it’s a very different story.
3. As it happened: EU summit on budget, coronavirus recovery fund
It was the European Council summit marathon to end (almost all) summit marathons: European leaders got together in Brussels in a bid to reach a deal on the EU budget and coronavirus recovery package, worth €1.8 trillion — and horse-traded for days and days and days. But billions of euros aside, the question on everyone’s lips: Was it the longest-ever EU summit? The answer: This is Brussels, nothing is as clear-cut as it seems.
2. Coronavirus: Live updates
POLITICO’s coronavirus live blog kicked off in early March — and for months, we kept track of every major development in the 27 EU countries (plus Britain), from lockdowns to economic relief packages to the impact on Brexit talks. We’re not sure you’ll want to relive all its gory glory — but then again, it’s not like anyone’s having a normal end-of-year holiday.
1. Europe’s country-by-country travel restrictions explained
The summer of 2020 brought some (short-lived, as it turned out) relief, both in terms of coronavirus infection numbers and lockdowns — presenting some with a chance to travel. We tracked the changing restrictions and requirements in every EU country and the U.K., and put them together in this one-of-a-kind guide.