EU countries clinch $2.1 tn Covid-19 deal

Commit to package, help those hit hardest by virus

Brussels, July 21: Weary but relieved, European Union leaders finally clinched a deal on an unprecedented 1.8 trillion-euro

($2.1 trillion) budget and Coronavirus recovery fund early Tuesday, somehow finding unity after four days and nights of fighting and wrangling over money and power in one of their longest summits ever. With masks and hygienic gel everywhere at the summit, the 27 leaders were constantly reminded of the potent medical and economic threat the virus poses to their continent, and grudgingly committed to a costly, massive aid package for those hit hardest by

Covid-19. “Extraordinary events, and this is the pandemic that has reached us all, also require extraordinary new methods,” German Chancellor Angela Merkel said. To confront the biggest recession in its history, the EU will establish a 750 billioneuro Coronavirus fund, partly based on common borrowing, to be sent as loans and grants to the hardest-hit countries. That comes on top of the sevenyear, 1 trillion-euro EU budget that leaders had been haggling over for months even before the pandemic.

“The consequences will be historic,” French President Emmanuel Macron said. “We have created a possibility of taking up loans together, of setting up a recovery fund in the spirit of solidarity,” a sense of sharing debt that would have been unthinkable not so long ago.

Merkel said, “We have laid the financial foundations for the Europen Union for the next seven years.”