Basically, there was this meeting called for the 27 members of the EU and started on Friday. The agenda? Corona aid.
Some of this chatter, I will refer back to a good news piece by ARD (German public TV, Channel One).
Everyone in the EU agrees that some massive aid package needs to occur. The way this would work....you as a member, would be assigned x-amount of money, and it'd go into a EU 'pot' of revenue. Based on the mathematical formula, it would be generated out, with the poorer EU members getting more than what they put in, and the richer nations getting less than they put in. The key component of this? A strategy would be developed and EU directors would say this pot of money must be used for 'X', and this pot of money must be used for 'Y'.
An example, you dictate that 200 million Euro would go to some Czech medical and nursing school apparatus. Then you write into the script that the money has to be toward Coronavirus type training or gear.
So this summit has worked itself up to a total amount of 1.8 trillion Euro. Yes, it is a hefty amount of money.
This argument started up early in the process, and it mostly involves the idea of loans and grants. Grants, you see....don't have to be paid back. Loans have to be paid back, but usually without interest.
Germany and France (the bigger players) kinda wanted a big chunk of money dished out as grants....meaning the money would never come back. Four minor players of the EU (Denmark, Sweden, Austria and the Netherlands) said 'no'....if there are grants, they need to be limited in nature. The Germany/France idea of the grant program? 750-billion Euro.....which would just never flow back. These other four countries? They don't even like the idea of 250-billion being the grant amount. To them, that's a tremendous amount of money.....to just being a 'gift' situation.
The summit going into Sunday? Well, it was supposed to wrap up by Saturday afternoon, and that deadline was missed.
So this other problem popped up in the wording of the 'gift'.....the 'rule of law' must be inserted into the process...meaning if you were not acting in the interest of the EU, they could just skip you in the 'gift' process. This is the funny thing....this behavior issue could have absolutely nothing to do with Corona. It could be about refugees or pollution, where you end up with a real emergency and no way to resolve conflicts. Hungary stood up and said it'd veto the whole thing, if this wording was inserted into the end-package. Poland has kinda leaned into this matter as well.
Will the summit successfully conclude on Sunday? Unknown. I've read through five different pieces on the chatter, and some think that a much lesser revenue pot will be created, and be something that they can all say that they did something.
The idea that Germany ought to prioritize things themselves and resolve their own landscape without the EU 'machine'? This has been brought up a good bit by non-journalists (if you look at private commentary and social media). Even the massive 'gift' amount of 750-billion Euro got a fair amount of attention and why it can't be developed more as a loan comes up.
Oddly enough, this is page one news and will probably consume 20-percent of tonight's public TV news.
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