EU commissioner on virus relief comparison to US

The European Union's top economy official said Monday that the recovery measures the EU and its 27 member states have in the works to emerge from the pandemic total around 5.85 trillion US dollars.

EU Economy Commissioner Paolo Gentiloni told a European Parliament committee that if comparisons are made with US President Joe Biden's pandemic stimulus relief package, the EU can confidently stand next to to Washington when all efforts are counted together.

“Measures taken until now from member states and the EU reach so far 4.8 trillion” euros, the Italian commissioner told legislators, sweeping aside criticism that authorities weren't doing enough compared with Washington.

The EU has agreed to a common recovery fund package of 750 billion euros (910 billion US dollars), plus a 1.1 trillion euro (1.3 trillion US dollars) seven-year budget that will be strongly geared toward dealing with the unprecedented economic recession caused by COVID-19 that the bloc's 450 million citizens will have to overcome.

During his first 100 days in office, Biden has secured passage of a sweeping 1.9 trillion US dollars pandemic package to bring relief to 330 million Americans.

“If we look at it in a certain way, we could say that the US reaction was stronger, faster than the European one,” Gentiloni said.

But he added, “that we are not a federal state.

Many major social affairs and economic policies are still run at a national level in the European Union, and stimulus measures for companies and the workforce also have a massive national input which is rarely visible in EU statistics.

Still the 750-billion euro “Next Generation EU” package stands out because it allows the bloc for the first time to raise money on the markets by itself.

Much of the aid will be spent among the poorer and harder-hit member states.