File photo. A meeting of EU finance ministers in February. Image: Enzo Zucchi DPA/PA Images File photo. A meeting of EU finance ministers in February. Image: Enzo Zucchi DPA/PA Images EU FINANCE MINISTERS have failed to agree on a bailout plan to help hard hit member states face the coronavirus outbreak, after Italy refused to abandon its plea for “coronabonds” to share the burden.
The European economy has been battered by the pandemic as national governments impose strict lockdowns that have closed businesses and put normal life on hold. Centeno, who is also Portuguese finance minister, is tasked with finding a compromise in a fight that has revived the bitter acrimony that split Europe during the eurozone debt crisis a decade ago.
“With German Finance Miister Olaf Scholz, we call on all European states to rise to the exceptional challenges to reach an ambitious agreement,” France’s Bruno Le Maire said after the talks ended.Italy is refusing recourse to the ESM, which was created in 2012 during the eurozone debt crisis when states like Greece no longer had access to borrowing on the markets.
“In the ‘northern’ view, the idea that there will never be any conditions to the ESM money, and the mutualisation of debt, is a bridge too far,” said an EU diplomat.
This crisis is showing even more now that the EU is no longer fit for purpose