Meeting in the 'enlarged Eurogroup' format, the 27 European Finance Ministers began their work on Tuesday 7 April at 4 p.m. on new budgetary and financial measures aimed at completing the arsenal already in place at EU level to combat the current COVID-19 pandemic and the future socio-economic crisis.
Negotiations were still under way on Wednesday 8 April, at press time. A press conference is scheduled for 10:00 this morning.
The work leading towards an "ambitious" EU economic policy response to #COVID19 is "well on track but not there yet", said the spokesman for Mário Centeno, the president of the Eurogroup.
In addition to the freezing of European budgetary rules, the increased mobilisation of the EU budget and the intervention of the ECB, a package of measures is on the ministers' table, including the following measures: – the activation of the European Stability Mechanism (ESM) via credit lines whose exact counterpart for the beneficiary countries has yet to be decided; – the creation of a pan-European guarantee fund for businesses within the EIB of up to €200 billion; – the introduction of the SURE unemployment reinsurance instrument with a budget of €100 billion.
“It is the most ambitious package ever prepared by the Eurogroup”, Mr Centeno stressed at the start of the work.
However, it was not clear whether the willingness of the most proactive and coronavirus-affected countries to open the door to joint debt issuance to finance economic recovery would survive the night of negotiations (see EUROPE B12463A). (Original version in French by Mathieu Bion)