CESI Secretary General Klaus Heeger said: “Ahead of tomorrow’s European Council, we see a clear need and urgency to take broad, swift and bold long-term socio-economic countermeasures against the Corona fallout. The leaders of the Member States should take the European Commission’s recovery proposal of May 27 as a compromise between Member States in need of solidarity and those that have the means to contribute financially. CESI explicitly supports the financial principles and mechanisms proposed by the European Commission: The EU issuing bonds on its relatively good credit rating terms, however limited in time and quantity; Member States with relatively unfavourable own credit ratings benefitting from direct EU grants or relatively favourable EU loans; the EU paying back loans to the financial markets through new own resources; the EU institutions being given the authority and control over these grants and loans. We call on goverments to move swiftly, as there is not time to lose for workers and citizens now that the Corona crisis unfolds in economically and socially.”

The Presidium of CESI calls on the EU institutions and the Member State leaders to complement this by further instruments to overcome the crisis and make the EU and its Member States’s economies and societies more resilient to face future crises. These include:

• substantial new public investment in reinvented public services;

• more accountability and capacity for EU-level crisis management, including access to sufficient levels of personal protective equipment and a functioning early warning system in cases of pandemics; and

• measures for more continuity of production, services and work during crises, which includes reinforced telework and distant working, a boosted digitalisation of public administrations and online availability of essential services of general interest, performing and functioning internet networks throughout Europe, and a reinforcement of reliable production chains.

Further details are laid out in this position paper.