Sunrise in Milan. Italy would get the most aid under a proposed E.U. stimulus package .Credit…Alessandro Grassani for The New York Times
For decades, even when the 2008 financial crisis threatened to blow the bloc apart, the European Union’s wealthier nations resisted the notion of collective debt. But the coronavirus has so fundamentally damaged the European economy that it is now forcing leaders there to consider the sort of unified and sweeping response once thought unthinkable.
The European Commission, the bloc’s executive branch, on Wednesday proposed that it raise 750 billion euros, or $826 billion, on behalf of all members to finance recovery from the economic collapse, the worst crisis in the history of the European Union.
The plan, which still requires approval from the 27 national leaders and their parliaments, would be the first time that the bloc raised large amounts of common debt in capital markets, taking the E.U. one step closer to a shared budget, potentially paid for through common taxes.
For those reasons, the proposal had all the hallmarks of a historic moment for the E.U., vesting greater authority in Brussels in ways that would make it more closely than ever resemble a central government.
“This is about all of us and it is way bigger than any one of us,” Ursula von der Leyen, the Commission president, told European Parliament members in a speech in Brussels. “This is Europe’s moment.”
At another moment — one without a calamitous recession looming — the proposal would most likely have been dead on arrival, antagonizing populists and nationalists who oppose amassing power in Brussels. But the urgent need for a powerful response to the virus has muted much of the appeal of their message, at least for now.
With Britain gone, the calamity has forced Germany and France, the bloc’s two strongest countries and often at loggerheads, to step up in a rare display of joint leadership, paving the way for the commission’s proposal.
