EU leaders struggle to save deadlocked virus recovery summit
EU leaders struggle to save deadlocked virus recovery summit
Squabbling EU leaders held round after round of group discussions on Sunday as they struggled to find enough common ground to justify re-opening negotiations on the third day of a summit to save a huge coronavirus rescue package. At the start of what she said was probably the “decisive” third day of the extraordinary summit, German Chancellor Angela Merkel had said there were still many divisions among the leaders, and so it proved. Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte led a coalition of “Frugals” — the Netherlands, Sweden, Austria, Denmark and now Finland — in a crusade to slash back the scale of the proposed 750-billion-euro package of loans and grants that Brussels wants to help the countries hit hard by the epidemic.