Enrique SerbetoSEGUIRCorresponsal in Brussels Updated: Save Send news by mail electrónicoTu name *
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The European Council that starts today in Brussels, it does so under the shadow that everyone is present in the european institutions and it is the certainty that the most serious of the economic crisis will come in the autumn , when to end measures to support companies. For this reason, the president of the European Commission, and Ursula von der Leyen insists that he does not consider even imagine to go on vacation in August if you have not come to an agreement about the recovery fund and the european budget. How an agreement will be reached between today or tomorrow or will we have to convene a second summit in two weeks? To that question no one dares to respond in a firm form in these moments.
“we Believe that an agreement is possible because all those who come to the European Council know that the cost of not reaching an agreement is not assumable” said yesterday european sources close to the president of the Commission. In line with what we highlighted yesterday the president of the European Central Bank, Christine Lagarde , for whom “it is critical that the european leaders to agree urgently a large package of recovery support for our monetary policy”, the Commission is also confident that in the end the leaders of the member countries will reach an agreement that includes more than a trillion euros to budgets for the next multi-year period 2021-2017 and the recovery fund that can reach up to 750,000 million .
The main resistance to accept the proposal that is on the table, and which has already undergone not a few cuts on the part of the chairman of the Board Charles Michel , trying to facilitate an agreement, come from the countries called “frugal” that do not see with good eyes ask their citizens to pay taxes to the grants to countries that have more problems because of the crisis caused by the pandemic.
The above-mentioned sources warn that it would be a mistake “be fixed only in the countries “frugal”, because the agreement you have to approve all”, but the truth is that everybody looks at is Holland , which not only complains of having to pay the “gifts” to Spain and Italy, but who wants to set a conditionality is very strict at the time of distributing the funds. The Commission has planned that everything will be framed in reform plans appropriately scrutinized by its officials, and for the Dutch Government, based on a flimsy parliamentary majority, it would have been very serious to listen to governments like the Spanish now say that you think lower taxes at the same time that is asking for money .
The essential element will be, as always, the contribution that each country compared to what they were the previous budgets. This is why the Commission is not to publish very precise computations before a summit like this, because this requires necessarily that there be any to end the meeting by recognizing that it has lost out. There’s also a chance to find flexibility in the mechanism of refund checks of those who benefit from almost all of the “frugal” or the promise that the debt recovery fund will be returned before the deadline.
In any case, for the Commission, the worst option would be to approve the budgets, but not the mechanism of the recovery fund , because they resent the whole exercise seven-year budget. Even with all that, warn that in the best of cases, the money for the grants will not be available until well into next year. The only advantage to one of the closest collaborators of the president is that “if it were the british at table , then it would be impossible.”
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