BRUSSELS, July 21 — European Union leaders clinched an “historic” deal on a massive stimulus plan for their coronavirus-throttled economies in the early hours of today, after a fractious summit that lasted almost five days. The agreement paves the way for the European Commission, the EU’s...
Tuesday, 21 Jul 2020 04:08 PM MYT
The agreement paves the way for the European Commission, the EU’s executive, to raise billions of euros on capital markets on behalf of all 27 states, an unprecedented act of solidarity in almost seven decades of European integration. French President Emmanuel Macron, who spearheaded a push for the deal with German Chancellor Angela Merkel, hailed it as “truly historic”.
The Netherlands led a group of “frugal” states with Austria, Sweden, Denmark and Finland, insisted that aid to Italy, Spain and other Mediterranean countries that took the brunt of the pandemic should be mainly in loans, not in non-repayable grants The bickering spun the summit out, making it the EU’s second-ever longest, just 20 minutes short of a record set in 2000 in Nice, according to Rutte. “We would have broken the record at 6.05, but we ended at 5.45,” he said.
The summit deal does not set the EU on the path towards a US-style fiscal union, although some see it as a first step.
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