14 maltatoday | SUNDAY • 26 JULY 2020
EYEWITNESS
Brussels
al fresco
European Council president Charles Michel
(second, from left) is seen speaking to the
EU's prime ministers in a bid to achieve a deal
after some four days of talks on negotiating
the seven-year budget for the European bloc.
Matters were made harder by the absence of
the UK from the bloc, which meant billions in
forgone revenues had to be plugged.
Malta emerged satisfied with its side of the
deal, taking some €2.25 billion in funds,
although the net beneficiary figure is close to
€650 million.
Here Michel is seen with (left to right) Jeppe
Tranholm-Mikkelsen, the EC's secretary-
general, Croatian PM Andrej Plenkovic,
Romanian PM Klaus Iohannis, Bulgarian PM
Boyko Borissov, and Maltese prime minister
Robert Abela. In order to engineer consensus
for the €1.82 trillion package, EC President
Michel had to downsize his original proposal
to meet the demands of so-called "frugal"
members of the EU. A €390 billion grants
facility was a significant cut compared to
the €500 billion called for by France and
Germany, but the share of grants in the
Recovery and Resilience Facility (RRF) was
slightly increased to €312.5bn.
The Recovery Fund is the EU's first common
counter-cyclical instrument, that is, there is
no austerity requirement and commits 30%
of funds for climate action. And the recovery
package appears to be large enough for the
scale of the COVID impact and targeted at the
hardest-hit member states and sectors.
