2 trillion-euro offer
European Union leaders have agreed to a recovery fund to help member states salvage their economies hard hit by the COVID-19 pandemic, but details of the plan have yet to be worked out and agreed upon.
After a video conference lasting more than four hours on Thursday, EU leaders called on the European Commission to come up with a detailed plan.
Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said she is very happy that the leaders had given the commission the task of shaping their collective response to the crisis.
“We have to design a common, future-proof answer to this, to ensure the integrity and the cohesion of the single market and its shared prosperity,” she said after the summit.
The scale, the speed and the impact of the economic crisis is unprecedented in modern times and some countries have been hit harder than others, she said.
“And unless we act decisively and collectively, the recovery will not be symmetric and divergences between member states will increase.”
The agreement followed blanket news coverage in recent weeks of a major disagreement over the recovery fund between members in the south and north.
It also came a week after Von der Leyen extended a “heartfelt apology” to Italy for EU members not coming to its aid early enough.
A poll last month by the news agency Dire showed that 88 percent of Italians felt they had been let down by their EU allies. A new survey by the pollster Bidimedia between April 15 and 16 found that 40 percent of Italians would support quitting the EU and scrapping the euro as its official currency, the Daily Express in Britain reported on Friday.
Von der Leyen said the only instrument that can deliver the tasks required for recovery is the 2021-27 EU budget.
European Council President Charles Michel said on Thursday that EU leaders expressed “a strong will to move forward together” and “work toward establishing a recovery fund”.
“This fund shall be of a sufficient magnitude, targeted toward the sectors and geographical parts of Europe most affected, and be dedicated to dealing with this unprecedented crisis,” he said.
Italy and Spain have been hit hard by the pandemic, with their cases and deaths trailing only the United States.
The unfolding economic crisis, widely regarded as the worst since the Great Depression, is a major test for Von der Leyen and Michel, both of whom took office in December.
Italian Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte, who had been critical of the EU’s response, described the agreement on Thursday as “an important milestone in European history”.
Italy, Spain and France had pushed for a eurobond recovery fund for weeks, only to be met with strong opposition by Germany, Austria, the Netherlands and Finland.
That opposition was no longer there on Thursday when details of the recovery fund were yet to be decided. That will happen when they meet in about two weeks.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel indicated on Thursday that she was open to offering as much as 2 trillion euros for the recovery fund but wanted to see how it would be used before committing the money.
“It was clear to everyone that we need such a recovery fund,” she said.
“I want to say very clearly that such a joint solution is in Germany’s interests, because things can only go well for Germany if they go well for Europe.”
During the video conference, European Central Bank President Christine Lagarde warned EU leaders that eurozone GDP could fall by 15 percent in the worst of cases, and by 9 percent with a more optimistic outlook, EURACTIV.com reported.
Carl Bildt, a former Swedish prime minister, now co-chair of the European Council on Foreign Relations, said that it must have been scary for EU leaders when Lagarde did not rule out the EU economy contracting as much as 15 percent this year.