Lionel Laurent, Columnist

An $826 Billion Battle Is Brewing in Europe

A bold European recovery plan has united France and Germany. Convincing the holdouts may not be so easy.

May 28, 2020 at 7:06 AM UTC

Lionel Laurent is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist writing about the future of money and the future of Europe. Previously, he was a reporter for Reuters and Forbes.

Crossing the Rubicon together.
Photographer: Alex Kraus/Bloomberg

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The European Union’s pandemic recovery plan has all the hallmarks of a historic leap in the dark for the 27-member bloc.

It aims to unleash as much as 750 billion euros ($826 billion) of fiscal stimulus, fueled by joint borrowing on financial markets — a big deal for member states that have always jealously guarded the power to tax and spend. The fact that the plan unveiled by Commission boss Ursula von der Leyen is so clearly aligned with the proposal from France’s Emmanuel Macron and Germany’s Angela Merkel is especially positive: Paris’s desire for continental assertiveness and foreign-policy grandeur hasn’t always matched Berlin’s focus on balanced budgets.