Still deadlocked on the budget, the EU is giving itself more time to emerge from the crisis

The President of the European Council Charles Michel during the European summit by videoconference on November 19.

AFP - OLIVIER MATTHYS

Text by: RFI Follow

3 min

The European budgetary sling of Poland and Hungary, now supported by Slovenia, is now - apparently - under wraps, a sign that intense negotiations have started between the 27. The virtual European summit on Thursday 19 November has in fact evacuated the issue in less than half an hour before devoting himself to the initially planned agenda, the coronavirus.

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With our correspondent in Brussels,

The three countries still reject the link between respect for the rule of law and the payment of European funds.

As one might fear, this summit did not make it possible to advance one iota towards the resolution of this new crisis while time is running out for the national economies which are impatiently awaiting the funds of the recovery plan (€ 750 billion ) and the seven-year budget (€ 1,100 billion).

Apart from

and Czech rebels, only the President of the European Council Charles Michel and Chancellor Angela Merkel, whose country holds the rotating presidency of the EU, spoke.

The 27 ultimately decided that the issue would be debated at their December summit, which was to be expected, given the now proven ineffectiveness of videoconferencing summits in resolving crises.

However, this does not augur well for a rapid release of the European budget or the recovery plan when most of the countries of the Union have already started to submit to the European Commission the projects for which they hope for European funding.

The two exit scenarios from the crisis are first of all the provision of guarantees, for example on the possibility of legal action against a possible suspension of European funds.

Some like France or the Netherlands then imagine the possibility of concocting a stimulus plan reduced to a group of voluntary countries but this would require new negotiations and would not resolve the issue of the EU budget for which unanimity of 27 is required.

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• European Union

• Hungary

• Slovenia

• Poland