• EU, Gentiloni: "Either we face the challenge together or we will fail together"
  • Coronavirus, EU suspends VAT and duties on masks and fans
  • Coronavirus, Conte a von der Leyen: "More courage is needed"
  • Von der Leyen: 2,770 billion euros from the EU and the member states against the crisis, the largest response ever given

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April 05, 2020 "For us, the goal is twofold: to respond to immediate needs and to ensure that member states and the euro area are resilient in the long term. In the past, the Fund has produced excellent results." For the Dutch Finance Minister Wopke Hoekstra, interviewed by Repubblica, the MES should be activated with the conditions related to austerity. "Even in the long-term strategy, we must make sure that the Union develops resilience and prosperity capable of lasting in the future," says Hoekstra. "I agree that the tools to do this must be common, but there are different points of view. In our opinion, the ECB is doing enough and Eurobonds are not a solution." Hoekstra denies that Holland is not in solidarity. "We are to the point that we have proposed a European Health Fund to which we want to contribute with fresh money. We want to help the health systems dominated by the pandemic. We will pour up to a billion and other countries want to participate: if many will follow, we will be able to collect among the 10 and 20 billion ", he declares.

Amendola: "Mes inappropriate. Eurogroup and governments make qualitative leap"
"In the face of this extraordinary crisis, extraordinary, new instruments are needed. The effort required of the Eurogroup and the EU Council is now: making a qualitative leap, building a more ambitious coordinated fiscal policy". The Minister for European Affairs, Enzo Amendola, said in an interview with Sky TG24 on the eve of a decisive week on the European response to the economic crisis due to the coronavirus that cannot be, he warned, "a business response as usual ". "Due to the nature of the crisis we are experiencing", the Mes "is no longer appropriate", reiterated the minister, stressing that "a tax policy with bonds" would have a "much more powerful" impact, while "so far a Mes without conditionality is more a topic from "news agencies". In more detail, "a tax policy financed with bonds, with debt securities, guaranteed by all 27, would have a far more powerful scope, even conditional on the objectives of the crisis ahead of us".

Sanchez: "Without solidarity the European Union at risk"
"The circumstances are exceptional and require resolutive attitudes: either we are up to the circumstances or we will fail as a Union. We need firm solidarity. Without solidarity there will be no cohesion, without cohesion there will be disaffection and therefore the credibility of the European project will come seriously damaged. " So the Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez in a letter to the Republic. The measures taken so far are positive but not sufficient: "Europe must set up a war economy and promote European resistance, reconstruction and recovery. And it must do so as soon as possible with measures aimed at supporting the public debt that many States they will have to do it later, once the health emergency is over - continues Sanchez - in order to rebuild the economies of the continent, mobilizing large quantities of resources through a 'new Marshall Plan' ". The Mes "can be useful in a first phase to inject liquidity into European economies through a credit line, if this is universal and without conditionality, but it will not be sufficient in the medium term", underlines Sanchez, according to whom "it is time to act in solidarity: by creating a new mechanism for debt mutualisation, acting in bulk for the purchase of basic health products, establishing coordinated strategies on cybersecurity and preparing a large intervention plan so that the recovery of the continent is fast and solid " . "The United States responded to the 2008 recession with incentives, while Europe responded with austerity. The results are known to everyone. Today, at a time when there is a deeper global economic crisis than that, The United States has implemented the largest mobilization of public resources in its history. And Europe? Is it willing to lag behind? " This is the time to break old national dogmas, "concludes Sanchez.

Former German ministers: "Marshall plan for Italy"
A "Marshall Plan" for Italy and Spain. It is the proposal of the former Foreign Ministers of Germany, Joschka Fischer and Sigmar Gabriel. In a large double-signature article published by both Handelsblatt and Tagesspiegel, Fischer and Gabriel warn that "the European Union runs the risk of losing its legitimacy" and "of failing dramatically" in the face of the pandemic of the coronavirus, "the greatest challenge since its inception", if nothing is done as quickly as possible in favor of the European countries most affected by the emergency.

In the appeal, the two historical German politicians ask that Germany, that is "the biggest economic and financial winner in Europe", take a decisive step forward and help the other member countries of the Union. "Europe now needs two things," Fischer and Gabriel write: "Common aid in the crisis and a common program of reconstruction after the crisis". In particular, "Italy and Spain will not forget for a hundred years if Europe and above all we Germans will leave them to their destiny: and that is exactly what we are doing", reads the article