Europe is here, it is moving, it is responding to the health emergency and preparing for an economic recovery.
For the past month, our Renaissance delegation has been working hard, within the Renew Europe group and with various Commissioners, governments and experts, to respond to the emergency and prepare for recovery. Many European movements and organisations, starting with the UEF, have strongly supported our approach, which was not so easy to explain initially. Our starting point was very simple. We face an unprecedented health emergency and a deep economic crisis. That is why we must deploy all the instruments we have and create new, highly innovative ones. If it is true that we are at war with the transnational threat of the coronavirus, then we must all develop and manage a war economy together. If we really want a European renaissance, we must project ourselves into tomorrow’s world and not remain prisoners of yesterday’s global debates. That is why we are convinced that the initiatives already taken and the work of the Eurogroup are already a very important step forward. Indeed, we must not “choose” between the different instruments: they must all be put in place, simply and quickly.
In the run-up to the European Summit on 23 April, political agreement has already been reached on some of these instruments: the SURE European Integration Fund (€100 billion); the decision to make €37 billion available to the regions without conditions; the action by the European Investment Bank, which will mobilise up to €200 billion; the new purchases of European Central Bank securities (up to €900 billion, or 7.3% of the GDP of the euro area, with which, in March alone, the ECB bought 12 billion Italian securities and only 2 billion German securities...); and finally, the use of the financing of the European Stability Mechanism (which has a capacity of €400 billion) to finance health spending unconditionally (i.e., without a ‘troika’, to put it simply).
We are convinced that all these instruments must be exploited to their fullest extent and that other, more innovative ones must be created to respond to the crisis by rapidly mobilising at least €2 trillion. This is why we have proposed ‘Recovery Bonds’ issued by a ‘Recovery Fund’. And we are pleased that several governments and some Commissioners have revived and developed our original proposal.
A difficult path, further complicated by the way the media and politicians have debated it in different countries. Why? Because many people have debated the world of yesterday instead of projecting themselves into the world of tomorrow. On the one hand, the ‘Eurobonds’ have been relaunched: a fantastic idea, involving the pooling of at least part of the existing national debts linked to a political Union, with a budget for the euro area, etc. The trouble is that the relaunch of this debate has reactivated tensions from yesterday’s world – the Greek crisis, between North and South, grasshoppers and ants and other even less pleasant stereotypes. And we do not have time now to get bogged down in this debate. We must act, in an innovative and effective way. In Italy, therefore, the absurd debate on the ESM rages on when it can and should be part of the answer (in new forms). Although they voted for it in 2010, the ineffable Matteo Salvini and Giorgia Meloni, act today as if it were the devil. And those who got a good deal, the Italian government, say they don’t want to use it. At his last conference, Giuseppe Conte played Salvini and Meloni’s game by saying that he does not want the ESM, even in a new form, thus contradicting the position defended by Italy within the Eurogroup. We know why, but the Prime Minister should think of Italy and Europe, not the Five Star Movement’s tummy ache. They did no better in Germany and the Netherlands, where many, including Ministers Peter Altmeier and Wopke Hoekstra, the nationalist parties and the newspaper Die Welt, made short-sighted, stupid and offensive statements.
In this situation, we have tried to propose innovative solutions, build new alliances and fuel the debate in the two key countries: Germany and the Netherlands.
This is why, at the risk of sounding fussy, we insisted from the outset on the idea of Recovery Bonds and the Recovery Fund. Unlike Eurobonds, Recovery Bonds do not involve debt pooling: nobody asks the German taxpayer to pay for Italian debt. On the contrary, we need to establish a European recovery plan, identify common objectives and European investments, establish the necessary additional resources and find them through the issue of common European bonds guaranteed by the EU budget: this is what Recovery Bonds are all about. This is an innovative proposal for which we have brought together the Renew Europe group for the first time and on the basis of which we hope to reach the broadest possible agreement with the other political groups in the European Parliament on 16 April. This proposal was reworded and defended by the French Government in the Eurogroup, and parts of the Dutch government in our group – such as D66, politicians such as Sophie in't Veld or Daniel Cohn-Bendit and many others – have used it to fuel the Dutch and German debate. Not to mention the German war debts, in short, but working on the new European challenges...
The Eurogroup approved the idea of the Recovery Fund.
It is now up to the European Parliament and the European Council to give their opinion on the Recovery Fund.
Above all, European leaders must show a sense of urgency and decide immediately “how much” and “when”. How much? The Recovery Fund should allow us to find €500 billion in new, supplementary resources. When? In a few months. How? By making rapid changes to the EU budget. That is why we are very satisfied with the positions taken by Commissioners Thierry Breton and Paolo Gentiloni. But now it is the Commission as a whole – and President Ursula von der Leyen – that must take a clear position in favour of Recovery Bonds and urgently present the necessary budgetary changes. Speed: that’s the key word now. So far, we have made better use of the Europe that exists. With the Recovery Fund, we must start to build the Europe that is not there. And next, to launch the Conference on the Future of Europe proposed by Emmanuel Macron on 2 March 2019 to enshrine a new European Constitutional Pact. The European Renaissance marathon continues...
Sandro Gozi, MEP for Renew Europe and President of the Union of European Federalists