EU secures $2.1 trillion budget and virus fund

BRUSSELS — After four days and nights of wrangling, exhausted European Union leaders clinched a deal on a $2.1 trillion budget and coronavirus recovery fund early Tuesday.

The 27 leaders grudgingly committed to a massive aid package for those hit hardest by COVID-19, which has killed about 135,000 people within the bloc.

“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 $865 billion coronavirus fund, partly based on common borrowing, to be sent as loans and grants to the hardest-hit countries. That is in addition to the agreement on the seven-year, $1.2 trillion EU budget that leaders had been haggling over for months even before the pandemic.

“The consequences will be historic,” French President Emmanuel Macron said.

The European Parliament still has to approve the deal.

Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte and others had wanted a link to be made between the handout of EU funds and the rule of law — a connection aimed at Poland and Hungary, countries with right-wing populist governments that many in the EU think are sliding away from democratic rule.

The compromise deal the leaders finally hammered out was one that Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban claimed as a victory.

“We not just managed to get a good package of money, but we defended the pride of our nations and made clear that it is not acceptable that anybody, especially those who inherited the rule of law criticize us, the freedom fighters that did a lot against the communist regime in favor of rule of law,” he said.