Meeting in 'enlarged Eurogroup' format on Friday 15 May, the Finance Ministers of the European Union should bring into operation the three safety nets approved by the European Council to deal with the economic crisis caused by Covid-19 (see EUROPE 12465/2).
Namely the following: - the European Stability Mechanism (ESM) credit line to the nineteen euro area countries (total envelope: €240 billion) (see EUROPE 12483/1); - the SURE instrument to help workers affected by short-time working (100 billion) (see EUROPE 12486/11); - the EIB's pan-European guarantee fund (200 billion).
First meeting as the nineteen members of the Euro area, the ministers will have an exchange of views with the Chair of the European Parliament's Committee on Economic and Monetary Affairs, Irene Tinagli, on the challenges posed by the coronavirus.
Then meeting as the EU27, they will have a strategic debate on the post-Covid-19 economic recovery. It will be an opportunity for everyone to put forward their position with a view to guiding the work of the European Commission, which is due to present a European recovery plan coupled with an amended proposal for a multiannual financial framework (MFF) 2021-2027 (see EUROPE 12486/2).
Several proposals are circulating. France gave its vision of a European Recovery Fund (see EUROPE 12483/2), as did Poland. Italy, allied with Spain, France, Portugal, Greece and Cyprus, is calling for this fund to be endowed with at least 1,000 billion euros and should provide aid to the most affected countries, mainly in the form of grants (see EUROPE 12485/20). The Nordic countries emphasise the importance of ensuring that the recovery effort benefits first and foremost sectors with a promising future and which are sustainable from an environmental point of view.
On Thursday, French Minister Bruno Le Maire said France would claim for support from the SURE instrument but not from the credit line of the ESM, the euro area's permanent rescue fund.
He considered that the Recovery Fund should "avoid widening divergences, which can be a serious threat to the euro area", recalling that Germany had submitted 52% of the requests for validation of crisis response state aid schemes to the Commission, compared with 16% for France and Italy and 2% for Spain. The fund is also "the only way" for Europe to keep pace with the United States and China by stimulating investment in health, strategic sectors (tourism, aeronautics, automotive, artificial intelligence) and research. Thirdly, Mr Le Maire added, the judgment of the German Constitutional Court in Karlsruhe, which calls into question the ECB's monetary policy, makes it "more necessary to deploy budgetary means" (see EUROPE 12484/18).
France calls for the aid to be paid in the form of budgetary grants and loans. These would be allocated to the countries most affected by the crisis, on the basis of "health and economic" criteria, to be defined, but reimbursed by the beneficiary countries in proportion to their share in the EU's GDP. (Original version in French by Mathieu Bion)