EU summit drags into 3rd day amid splits on virus fund
BRUSSELS (AP) — European Union leaders remained fundamentally divided for a third day Sunday over an unprecedented 1.85 trillion-euro ($2.1 trillion) EU budget and coronavirus recovery fund, and German Chancellor Angela Merkel warned that they might not reach a deal despite the urgency imposed by the pandemic.
Luxembourg Prime Minister Xavier Bettel said in his seven years’ experience of European meetings, “I have never seen positions as diametrically opposed as this.”
Even with Merkel and French President Emmanuel Macron negotiating as the closest of partners, the traditionally all-powerful Franco-German alliance could not get the bloc's 27 quarreling nations in line.
Often negotiating outdoors on a sundeck in the Europa summit center in Brussels, the blue skies and fresh breeze had no impact on the mood. Undiplomatic terms like “”hate" and “grumpy" have been thrown around between leaders during marathon negotiations that should have drawn everyone closer together to fight a historic recession in the bloc.
“Whether there will be a solution, I still can’t say,” Merkel said as she arrived early for the extra day of talks.
The differences were so great that Sunday's resumption of talks by all 27 leaders together was pushed back several hours to near evening as small groups worked on new compromise proposals.
The pandemic has sent the EU into a tailspin, killing around 135,000 of its citizens and sending its economy into an estimated contraction of 8.3% this year.
The bloc's executive has proposed a 750 billion-euro coronavirus fund, partly based on common borrowing, to be sent as loans and grants to the countries hit hardest by the pandemic. That comes on top of the seven-year 1 trillion-euro EU budget that leaders have been haggling over for months...
