France and Germany today will be proposing a joint plan in order to help the EU recover from the coronavirus crisis.
French President Emmanuel Macron and Germany’s Chancellor Angela Merkel will propose the new plan via video conference starting at 3.30pm which will then be followed by a press conference around 5pm.
The new plan is being put together in order to support countries in the European Union deal with the challenges from the pandemic. This will include areas such as health, the environment and digital technology.
Both leaders have been looking for a way to tackle the crisis at the EU level with the new initiative while the recovery debate rages on.
The economic impact of the coronavirus on Europe has been substantial and worse than the 2008-2009 recession. The eurozone economy as a whole is on course to contract up to 8% in 2020, a staggering economic plunge that puts the project at risk.
Italy, Greece and Spain have been hard hit but the EU’s two largest economies, France and Germany, are also in recession.
In their conference today, Macron and Merkel will show a united front in tackling the problem at the European level and will take questions from reporters about the French-German initiative when it is formally announced.
