EU struggling over virus recovery funding
BRUSSELS — Seeking to tug at the hearts of all European Union leaders, EU Council President Charles Michel implored them late Sunday to overcome their fundamental divisions and agree on an unprecedented $2.1 trillion EU budget and coronavirus recovery fund to tackle the crisis.
After three days of fruitless talks, Michel conjured up during an official dinner the vision of the 600,000 dead that COVID-19 has claimed around the world and the unprecedented recession it has wrought on the bloc.
“Are the 27 EU leaders capable of building European unity and trust or, because of a deep rift, will we present ourselves as a weak Europe, undermined by distrust,” he asked the leaders at the end of another day of divisive negotiations. The text of the behind-closed-doors speech was obtained by the Associated
Press.
“I wish that we succeed in getting a deal and that the European media can headline tomorrow that the EU succeeded in a Mission Impossible,” Michel said.
Heading into a fourth day of talks when the summit was meant to last only two, any compromise was still out of reach. An official close to Michel, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss the private talks, said leaders would work deep into the night if necessary.
Even with German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Emmanuel Macron negotiating as the closest of partners, the traditionally powerful Franco-German alliance could not get the bloc’s 27 quarreling nations in line.
The pandemic has sent the EU into a tailspin, killing around 135,000 of its citizens and sending its economy into an estimated contraction of 8.3 percent this year.
The bloc’s executive has proposed a 750 billion euro coronavirus fund, partly based on common borrowing, to be sent as loans and grants to the countries hit hardest by the pandemic. That comes on top of a seven-year, 1 trillion euro EU budget that leaders have been haggling over for months even before the pandemic hit.
All the nations agree that they need to band together, but five richer countries in the north, led by the Netherlands, want strict controls on spending, while struggling southern nations such as Spain and Italy say those conditions should be kept to a minimum.
At their dinner table Sunday night, the leaders could mull a proposal from the five wealthy northern nations that suggested a coronavirus recovery fund with 350 million euros of grants and the same amount in loans. The five EU nations, nicknamed “the frugals” — the Netherlands, Austria, Finland, Sweden and Denmark — had long opposed any grants.