Germany following “diabolical plan” for coronavirus aid, Italian MEP says

An Italian MEP is claiming that Germany is manipulating the Netherlands to pursue its own interests in the European Union’s economic response to the coronavirus (COVID-19) crisis.

As the EU member states are facing an unprecedented crisis amidst the ongoing lockdowns that have been enacted in an effort to prevent the coronavirus from spreading further, they have failed on four occasions thus far to reach a financial deal that is acceptable to all members. Belgium, France, Greece, Ireland, Italy, Luxembourg, Portugal, Slovenia, and Spain are calling for the Eurozone to issue so-called “coronabonds” which would offer aid to the bloc’s members and spread the debt across all of them.
 
But the “Frugal Four” — Austria, Finland, Germany, and the Netherlands — are objecting, calling instead for the activation of the European Stability Mechanism (ESM), an institution set up after the 2008 financial crisis which can provide loans to Eurozone countries. If the ESM is used, member states could take out loans from the ESM in the form of bond purchases from the European Central Bank (ECB). Italian politicians on both the Left and Right have made it clear that they will reject loans from the ESM, even if it means collapsing Italy’s current ruling coalition, as previously reported by Voice of Europe.

Italian MEP Antonio Maria Rinaldi, who is an economist and a member of Matteo Salvini’s Right-wing Lega party, gave an interview to the British newspaper Express in which he accused Germany of using the Netherlands to further its own agenda in relation to the financial crisis.

https://twitter.com/V_of_Europe/status/1249080426762731520

Last week, the Dutch Parliament passed a motion which recommended that the country should never assume responsibility for another nation’s debt. The motion had been put forward by the populist, euroskeptical Forum for Democracy party.

Rinaldi told Express that “there is no leadership within Europe,” and that the ECB is led by an “incompetent figure” — namely, Christine Lagarde — and suggested that the ECB should be following the examples set by some national banks, such as those of England and Japan. He says the ECB won’t do this because it “has been taken hostage by bureaucrats.”

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