By Marine Strauss
BRUSSELS (Reuters) – European Union leaders will hold a video conference on April 23 to discuss the economic response to coronavirus, the President of the European Council Charles Michel said on Friday, a day after EU finance ministers agreed on half-a-trillion euros worth of support for their coronavirus-battered economies.
“It is time to lay the ground for a robust economic recovery. This plan has to relaunch our economies whilst promoting economic convergence in the EU. The EU budget will have to play a meaningful role here,” Michel said in a statement issued via Twitter.
He called the deal reached on Thursday a “significant breakthrough.”
EU leaders will have to explore the “setting up of a temporary Recovery Fund to ensure a robust European economic recovery in all Member States,” the statement said.
Michel said he is working with the European Commission, the EU’s executive, on a “Roadmap and Action Plan to ensure the well-being of all Europeans and to bring the EU back to strong, sustainable and inclusive growth based on a green and digital strategy.”
The package agreed by finance ministers would bring the EU’s total fiscal response to the epidemic to 3.2 trillion euros ($3.5 trillion), the biggest in the world, on top of measures that member states are taking at national level.
(Reporting by Marine Strauss @StraussMarine; Editing by Frances Kerry)
