EU finance ministers push against coronavirus gridlock

EU heavyweights France and Germany were working on a solution to fight economic consequences of the coronavirus pandemic, as EU finance ministers were set to negotiate on Thursday afternoon.

The ministers were unable to come up with a solution at the marathon-length talks on Wednesday, reportedly due to the Netherlands wanting tougher conditions for member states to take cheap loans.

“We are very close to an agreement,” said the group’s chairman Mario Centeno, just before the conference was set to start. “I trust – I still trust – that this time we will all rise to the occasion.”

“The Netherlands will need to move a bit, otherwise it won’t work again,” one eurozone official involved in the talks told the Reuters news agency. “That will be critical. There are many calls going on, at all levels.”

Read more:  Opinion: EU must address pandemic’s effects on economies

French Finance Minister Bruno Le Maire said the officials were “making progress.”

“An agreement is necessary, an agreement is possible,” he said as the conference got underway.

Pressure was now piling on the Dutch government to accept the compromise solution presented by Berlin and Paris. Ahead of the Thursday conference, Dutch PM Mark Rutte said he believed it would be possible to agree on a €500 billion ($546 billion) rescue package to mitigate the impact.

“We’re trying to do the maximum to help to bring the negotiations to a successful conclusion,” Rutte told reporters in the Hague.

The EU countries agree on the need for a large recovery fund but have so far failed to agree whether or not the loans should be conditioned on financial reforms. The EU states are also at loggerheads on how to finance the fund itself, with Italy, Spain, France and other, mostly southern EU countries, wanting a joint borrowing scheme and countries like Germany, the Netherlands, Finland and Austria opposing the so-called “coronabonds” idea. 

Read more:  Coronabonds and the idea of European financial unity

On Thursday, German Chancellor Angela Merkel rejected the initiative, telling members of her conservative political bloc there was no “political consensus” for it. However, she also told them she had been in contact with France’s Emmanuel Macron, the Netherlands’ Rutte and Italy’s Giuseppe Conte, saying that a compromise solution was “very close.” 

Merkel’s finance minster, the Social Democrat Olaf Scholz, said in Berlin ahead of the conference that “it looks like an agreement is possible.” 

Meanwhile, Italian Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte warned that EU leaders “needed to seize the opportunity to put new life into the European project.”

“It’s a big challenge to the existence of Europe and to the history of Europe,” Conte told the BBC.

Merkel said she and Conte had agreed on the “urgent need for solidarity in Europe, which is going through one of its most
difficult hours, if not the most difficult.”

“And Germany is ready for this solidarity and committed to it. Germany’s well-being depends on Europe being well,” she said.

dj/msh (AFP, AP, dpa, Reuters)

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Article source: https://www.dw.com/en/eu-finance-ministers-push-against-coronavirus-gridlock/a-53080298?maca=en-rss-en-bus-2091-xml-atom