The video meeting between the nineteen finance ministers within the euro zone, the Eurogroup, is still going on well into the night. For several hours, separate discussions were held in small circles by different countries to force a breakthrough, but that did not lead to a quick solution. It is still unclear until what time the meeting will last.
The Netherlands and Italy in particular did not agree. The issue is the use of the European emergency fund ESM to combat the corona crisis.
Consultations were halted at the beginning of the evening to reach a general agreement through private parties. The conversation was restarted at around midnight, but was broken off again after an hour.
It is said that the Italians want to have access to money from the ESM without any conditions.
The Netherlands is one of the countries that strongly object to this. “You can’t ask that of Dutch taxpayers, can you? I do not agree in any way,” said Minister Wopke Hoekstra on Tuesday afternoon during a debate in the House of Representatives.
Hoekstra has been strict in Europe when it comes to emergency financial aid. He was criticized by this attitude, especially from the southern European countries that need aid the most. Hoekstra acknowledged that he was not empathetic enough, even initiated a corona fund to which the Netherlands would contribute 1 billion euros, but did not deviate from his position.
That means no eurobonds, the joint issuance of European debt, and no unconditional support from the European emergency fund.
Hoekstra proposed that countries should initially appeal to the ESM to finance medical aid, but in the longer term agreements should be made about how a country can better protect itself against a crisis in the future.
Other European emergency packages are also possible
Other European emergency packages were also discussed. For example, last week the European Commission launched the plan to maintain employment levels with a new fund of up to 100 billion euros, a kind of European part-time unemployment benefit.
The Commission also released EUR 37 billion from the so-called Structural Funds, which are funds intended mainly to help poor regions within the EU. That money is now being used to combat the corona crisis.
These initiatives were not a concern on Wednesday night. On the Dutch side, there were only questions as to why relatively much money is going from this pot to Poland and Hungary, while Spain and Italy have been hit much harder by the corona crisis.
Three weeks ago, the European Investment Bank, an investment arm of the European Union, has already pledged 40 billion euros to support European small and medium-sized enterprises.
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