Virus fund divides EU summit
Disagreements on $2.1T budget push meetings into third day
BRUSSELS — European Union leaders remained fundamentally divided for a third day Sunday over an unprecedented $2.1 trillion EU budget and coronavirus recovery fund, and German Chancellor Angela Merkel warned that they might not reach a deal despite the urgency imposed by the pandemic.
Luxembourg Prime Minister Xavier Bettel said in his seven years of experience of European meetings, “I have never seen positions as diametrically opposed as this.”
Even with 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.
Often negotiating outdoors on a sundeck in the Europa summit center in Brussels, the blue skies and fresh breeze had no impact on the mood. Undiplomatic terms like “hate” and “grumpy” have been thrown around between leaders during marathon negotiations that should have drawn everyone closer together to fight a historic recession in thebloc.
“Whether there will be a solution, I still can’t say,” Merkel said as she arrived early for the extra day of talks.
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 the seven-year, 1 trillion-euro EU budget that leaders have been haggling over for months even before the pandemic hit.
All nations agree 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 like Spain and Italy say those conditions should be kept to a minimum.
The differences were so great that Sunday’s resumption of talks by all 27 leaders together was pushed back several hours as small groups worked on new compromise proposals.
The leaders finally sat down to dinner together in the early evening, and could mull a proposal from the group of five wealthy northern nations that suggested a coronavirus recovery fund with 350 million euros of grants and the same amount again in loans. The five EU nations nicknamed “the frugals” — the Netherlands, Austria, Finland, Sweden and Denmark — had long opposed any grants at all.
Merkel and Macron walked out of heated talks before dawn Sunday with the frugals, bemoaning their lack of commitment to a common cause.