European Union leaders agreed on Thursday to build a trillion euro emergency fund to help recover from the coronavirus pandemic, avoiding another all-night bust-up but leaving divisive details until the summer.
Meanwhile, on May 6, the European Commission will put forward a draft proposal for a new long-term budget, including a plan to finance the economic recovery from the coronavirus crisis. The timing, which von der Leyen confirmed during a videoconference of EU heads of state and government, gives the Commission just 13 days to develop the plans, which are expected to include financing for a recovery initiative totaling as much as €2 trillion.
Very happy that EU leaders tasked the @EU_Commission with shaping our collective response to the #coronavirus crisis. We will come forward with a proposal for an #MFF, clearly linked to the the Recovery Fund. → https://t.co/VHdlJgsip0 pic.twitter.com/ojDtNDYFRZ
— Ursula von der Leyen (@vonderleyen) April 23, 2020
With the EU‘s Brussels headquarters under lockdown – along with most of Europe – the 27 leaders held a four-hour video conference to consider proposals, rallying around a bigger common budget for 2021-27 with a recovery programme.
At around 1% of the EU‘s economic output, the multi-year common budget has long been one of the most contentious subjects of debate for its members. Expanding it will not be easy, even if Italy’s Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte hailed “great progress” after the summit ended.
Grandi progressi, impensabili fino a poche settimane fa, all’esito del Consiglio Europeo appena terminato. A breve maggiori dettagli in conferenza stampa #euco pic.twitter.com/FU1syhXNhN
— Giuseppe Conte (@GiuseppeConteIT) April 23, 2020
French President Emmanuel Macron said differences continued between EU governments over whether the fund should be transferring grant money, or simply making loans. “Divisions remain,” Macron told reporters in Paris.
“I’m saying this sincerely: if Europe raises debt to loan to others, that won’t live up to the response we need,” he said, adding that it would saddle already heavily-indebted countries, such as Italy, Belgium and Greece, with yet more debt. Europe is facing a severe economic shock from the spread of COVID-19, the respiratory disease caused by the novel coronavirus, which has also led to border closures across the bloc and left member states fighting over medical supplies.
European Central Bank Governor Christine Lagarde told the leaders the pandemic could cut between 5% and up to 15% of euro zone economic output, officials and diplomats said. The euro zone’s economic growth for 2020 is forecast to contract 5.4%, which would make it the worst year since the common currency was introduced in 1999, according to a Reuters poll. That is still better than the International Monetary Fund’s latest forecast for a decline of 7.5%.
“POLITICAL EMERGENCY”
After weeks of squabbling, the leaders approved half-a-trillion euros worth of an immediate rescue scheme to protect jobs, businesses and offer cheap credit to governments.
But with Italy and Spain hit far harder than Germany by the crisis, old enmities have surfaced across the bloc. Reaching agreement among euro zone finance ministers two weeks ago on the smaller euro rescue scheme was torturous, as the Netherlands refused an Italian demand to issue common debt. Conte told leaders that a recovery fund should be 1.5 trillion euros in size and provide grants to EU governments to stop countries heading towards economic collapse and thereby threatening the viability of the bloc’s internal market.
“Grants are essential,” Conte said, according to diplomats who were on the video conference. “The sanitary emergency has quickly become a social emergency. But now we are facing a political emergency as well.” Austria’s Chancellor Sebastian Kurz took the opposite view, saying on Twitter that, while Vienna was ready to show solidarity, “we should do this through loans”.
Kurz said he would coordinate with “like-minded countries”, a reference to wealthy but cautious northern countries such as Denmark, Sweden, Finland and the Netherlands, who resent having to pay for poorer southern countries they see as fiscally irresponsible. Spain, one of the world’s worst hit countries, backs Italy’s view that a fund must issue grants, rather than loans, while France has argued for a fund that could issue common EU debt, hoping its temporary nature will calm passions.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel took a conciliatory stance as she publicly called for a major recovery fund after the summit. “Things can only go well for Germany if they go well for Europe,” she said. Leaders tasked the European Commission, the EU executive, to present detailed proposals by May 6, diplomats said.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel signalled on Thursday she was open to offering major financial support for a coronavirus recovery package worth as much as 2 trillion euros, but wanted to see how it would be used before committing.
Speaking to reporters after a video conference of EU leaders on setting up a joint fund to avert an economic collapse in parts of the 27-member bloc, Merkel said leaders agreed on the need for a fund but disagreed on details.
FT reports Merkel telling fellow EU leaders Germany is prepared to make a substantial financial contribution to help relaunch the region’s economies after the coronavirus pandemic as member states asked the European Commission to create a “recovery fund”. In a relatively brief leaders’ videoconference summit on Thursday, the German chancellor said the EU needed to prevent an asymmetric economic recovery once lockdowns ease. Her country was ready, she said, to join in a huge common effort worth around €1tn. Leaders agreed to ask the commission to establish a recovery fund, although they failed to find common ground on its size and, crucially, on whether it should hand out grants or loans.
Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said EU countries had so far handed out state aid worth 1.8 trillion euros to cushion the economic hit and that the new recovery fund would be in the order of magnitude of a trillion euros. She said the solution was to increase the amount that each EU government would be liable to pay into a recovery fund if needed, raising it to 2% of gross national income (GNI), from 1.2% today. GNI is the EU‘s preferred measure of economic output.
Most significantly, that means an implicit guarantee needed from EU governments for the Commission to issue bonds, a kind of “contingent liability”. The Commission has a triple-A credit rating, issuing against the security of the next EU long-term budget.
Reuters – POLITICO – Financial Times
