Correspondent in Brussels
The recovery plan and the EU budget have started their arduous journey. And the very first step, Thursday in the European Parliament, does not bode well.
MEPs were indeed very critical of the “historic” agreement reached by the Twenty-Seven on Tuesday morning. The President of the Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, admitted at the beginning of the debates that it would be "a pill difficult to swallow" . She found there objective allies.
Read also: Recovery plan: questions about a "historic agreement"
To reduce the bill for the recovery plan while slightly increasing the volume of direct aid that Member States will receive to finance national stimulus (312.5 instead of 310 billion euros), the Twenty-Seven have cut back increases in funding for Community policies which had been proposed at the end of May by the Commission. Health, climate, research, border protection, Erasmus and defense are all valuable long-term policies. But they meet again
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