In an open letter published in ten leading European newspapers on Sunday, Spanish President Pedro Sánchez told EU leaders that the fate of the entire European project of the last 40 years rides on their joint response to the coronavirus pandemic that is sweeping the continent.
Calling the epidemic the worst crisis “since the second world war,” Sánchez wrote that the EU is “facing a different war from those we have successfully averted over the past 70 years: a war against an invisible enemy that is putting the future of the European project to the test.”
Published in English in The Observer on Sunday, the article in the form of an open letter also appeared in Spain in El País, as well as in the French newspaper Le Monde, Italy’s La Repubblica, Germany’s Frankfurter Allegemeine Zeitung, the Belgian newspapers Le Soir and De Standaard, Portugal’s Publico, in NRC Handelsbladt in the Netherlands and in TO VIMA in Greece.
► Click to read Pedro Sánchez letter in The Observer …
In the article, Sánchez reiterated the call for a European “Marshall Plan” to help rebuild the economies of EU member states after the emergency phase of the coronavirus had passed, saying that “significant measures that have been announced over the past few weeks … are not enough on their own. We must go further.”
Sánchez called on European leaders to commit to building a “wartime economy” and to “promote European resistance, reconstruction and recovery” starting now. Joint financing of measures to support the public debt being taken on by member states to face the coronavirus threat are needed, he said, but extraordinary measures will also need to follow the immediate health emergency in order to finance recovery and reconstruction of the European economies.
“The circumstances are exceptional and call for unwavering positions, either we rise to this challenge or we will fail as a union,” Sánchez wrote. “We have reached a critical juncture at which even the most fervently pro-European countries and governments, as is Spain’s case, need real proof of commitment. We need unwavering solidarity.”
► Read more in Spanish at: Europa Press and El País …
► Read more in English at: Euronews and The Brussels Times …
► Click to read more news about Spain’s Coronavirus crisis …
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