Several Italian and German politicians, including former Italian Prime Minister Mario Monti and former MEP Elmar Brok, are calling on the leaders of the European institutions and Member States to implement a European action plan to respond to the COVID-19 pandemic.
The call, revealed on Thursday 2 April, was initiated by German MEPs Sven Giegold and Alexandra Geese of the Greens/EFA group and former MEP Franziska Brantner, now elected to the German Parliament.
In particular, the signatories call for the pooling of national medical capacities so that patients from particularly affected countries can be treated urgently. They also call on States to coordinate the production and distribution of protective equipment, respirators, pharmaceuticals and tests, so that Europe can be self-sufficient in this field.
In addition, institutions and Member States are called upon to join forces to prevent financial markets from speculating against individual states and to add a ‘health’ credit line to the European Stability Mechanism (ESM), the rescue fund for the euro area, in order to guarantee states “reliable and long term access to the low interest rate funding made possible by the ECB”.
“We should start to prepare the measures necessary to get back to a normal functioning of our societies and economies and to sustainable economic development”, MEPs finally stress, referring to the need for a coordinated exit strategy.
To view the appeal: https://bit.ly/3aCL6ZL (Original version in French by Agathe Cherki)