This comes as some of the activities that had been banned for several weeks are resuming today in France, Switzerland and Belgium in particular.

Worries linger about the shape of the recovery, as countries leap into the unknown. In Wuhan, there are five new cases, while Seoul has had to close its night-time entertainment venues after a resurgence in the number of contaminations. Iran is also recording a resurgence in cases, as well as Germany. There are now 4.1 million officially recorded cases of Covid-19 worldwide, with 283,000 deaths, according to the Johns Hopkins University Scoreboard.

The Covid-19 crisis will have long term consequences on the organization of companies. For example, Facebook and Google are allowing their employees to continue working remotely until at least 2021.

Meanwhile, Boris Johnson is launching a three-step plan to ease the lockdown in the UK, and is already drawing criticism. Elsewhere in Europe, the European Commission wants the EU's external borders to remain closed until mid-June for non-essential travel. In parallel, Emmanuel Macron and Boris Johnson have announced that there will be no quarantine between the two countries.

The President of the European Commission is not happy that the German Supreme Court is challenging the decisions of the European Central Bank. Ursula Von Der Leyen said that "EU law takes precedence over national law" and that the next step could "include the option of an infringement procedure". Germany has never really supported the expansionist vision of the ECB. Several German citizens had filed a complaint against the asset repurchase program initiated by the ECB.

The world's eyes were riveted on the release of the Bureau of Labor Statistics on Friday. The unemployment rate thus, not surprisingly, came out at record levels of 14.7%. The report shows that it is the most precarious workers who are the most affected. This situation could cause millions of Americans to lose their health insurance. 

To conclude, Norway's central bank has cut rates again to 0% from 0.25%. A decision to cut rates had already been taken in March, bringing them down from 1.5 to 0.25%. Norges Bank also pointed out that the fall in oil prices has weighed on the Norwegian krone. According to its forecasts, the price of black gold should remain low in the near future and return to a gradual rise over the next few years. The central bank believes that this will contribute to a temporary rise in inflation, leading to stagnation in real wage developments.

Not much on the agenda today, with only one statistic in sight, the Italian industrial production of April.