Brussels: European Union leaders are meeting Friday in the largest room they could find at their summit center so they can keep apart as a health precaution. That’s not the only way in which they are far apart they are also a long way from one another on the subject of the meeting: plans for an unprecedented 1.85 trillion euro (USD 2.1 trillion) EU budget and recovery fund.
French President Emmanuel Macron led the early negotiations and using the the pre-summit hours to meet with Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte, a stringent budget hardliner and considered one of the biggest obstacles to reaching a deal at the two-day meeting.
It could go even longer, if necessary, to bridge the differences between leaders. We want a result and we will continue working until we get that result, if need be until Sunday, said Latvian Prime Minister Arturs Karins upon arrival.
The challenges facing the 27 EU nations are formidable. The bloc is suffering through the worst recession in its history and member states are fighting over who should pay the most to help other countries and which nations should get the most to turn around their battered economies.
The crisis brought about by this pandemic, with all of its economic and social consequences, is the most severe we have had to face since the Second World War, European Council President Charles Michel said late on Thursday.
The urgency is such that the leaders have ended a string of coronavirus-enforced video conference summits and are meeting in person for the first time since the pandemic began.
The usual summit venue, an intimate room high up in the urn-shaped Europa center, was deemed too snug to be safe and instead the leaders have been sent down to meeting room EBS-5, whose 850 square meters (9,150 square feet) normally fits 330 people. (AP)
