Il European Council concluded with an agreement in principle on the thing: Recovery Fund it is necessary to address the crisis triggered by the coronavirus pandemic and the European Commission will have to present a proposal on it by 6 May. like, however, everything remains to be decided: the heads of state and government are still deeply divided on the tools, times and strategies to be adopted to give life to the Fund. In short, the negotiations will still be long and the definitive agreement is postponed to the European Council in June.
“Some progress has been made, but we don't agree on how to make the Recovery Fund work, whether with subsidies (i.e. non-repayable money, ed) or loans – explained the German chancellor hotly, Angela Merkel – But one thing is clear: the Fund it will be linked to the next European budget for the next seven years. This means that Germany will have to guarantee a higher contribution than we had taken into account in the last negotiation. And rightly so."
The goal is to be able to mobilize 2 trillion eurosi.e. double the current budget. To these resources should be added the Fund, which will be temporary (2021-2027), and should have a range of 320 billion, obtained through the issue of bonds by the Commission (a possibility guaranteed by the Treaties, which therefore would not require any modification). The funding would be given to individual states, half as loans and half in the form of specific programs for the countries most affected by the emergency. There is though a timing problem, because the new EU budget will be operational from 2021 January XNUMX and therefore, probably, it will be necessary to find a bridging solution.
No way as far as Eurobonds are concerned: Merkel reiterated that, for Germany, debt mutualisation is wrong from a conceptual point of view and impracticable from a technical point of view, because it would require us to put our hands on the Treaties, a process that would take a very long time.
But this was not the only thrust of the chancellor: "If we are going, as it seems we are going, towards the mobilization of an unprecedented amount of money to build the necessary budgetary capacity - Merkel said during the video conference on Thursday - At that time we need to have coherence in corporate tax systems and we need a path of convergence: not a huge amount of different ideas about how to use our tax systems.”
According to the Italian prime minister, Giuseppe Conte, "1.500 billion euros must be freed immediately, a portion of which within this year through a bridging loan, and it is not a question of altruism but of necessity, in a market in which North and South are inextricably linked".
The French president Emmanuel Macron speaks instead of "massive interventions, fund transfers, not loans".
Meanwhile, the number one of the ECB, Christine Lagarde, invites Europe to show courage: "The GDP of the Eurozone risks suffering a contraction of 15% - he said - So far you have acted little and late: a strong and flexible Recovery Fund is needed immediately".
Whatever form it takes, the Recovery Fund will add up to the 540 billion package already approved by the Eurogroup, which includes unconditional loans from the Mes for "direct and indirect" health interventions, the strengthening of loans from the EIB for small and medium-sized enterprises and the new "Sure" fund for a sort of European layoffs. All operational measures as early as June XNUMXst.
The European Council itself underlined that Italy has not requested the activation of the Mes and that in any case the agreement explicitly specified that conditionalities are not and will not be envisaged to access the State-saving fundneither now nor in the future.
Words that were not enough to appease the Italian opposition. Matteo Salvini called Conte "a thief of the future, of democracy, of freedom" and the agreement reached by the European Council "a failure, a defeat, a defeat". On the same line Giorgia Meloni, who speaks of "a defeat that will pay for the whole country" and of a "government unable to bring home the result".
