(Bloomberg) — German Chancellor Angela Merkel showed a united front with Italy’s Giuseppe Conte days ahead of a crucial European Union summit, warning that EU leaders need to deliver a “massive” response to the economic fallout of the coronavirus pandemic.

The German leader’s common line with the Italian prime minister was a sales pitch in favor of a proposed 750 billion-euro ($853 billion) recovery plan, which has met with resistance from a handful of member states concerned by the cost.

“It has to be something special — and it can’t be dwarfed” in size by horse-trading compromises, Merkel told reporters outside Berlin alongside Conte. “The task is a huge one, so the response also has to be a big one.”

EU leaders will gather in Brussels on Friday for the first time since the pandemic swept the continent. On the table is a recovery fund backed by Germany and France intended as a show of solidarity to nations hit hardest by the illness, such as Italy and Spain.

Italy, which has tallied almost 35,000 deaths from the virus, stands to become the biggest beneficiary of the EU package. Conte said his government is willing to accept tighter criteria for the grants and loans package, a signal to nations such as the Netherlands, which have demanded a set of conditions attached to any funding.

“The European Council must take a decision that is coherent with the level of ambition of the commission and Franco-German proposals,” Conte said. “We must say ‘yes’ immediately to an instrument.”

Merkel hosted the Italian premier at the government guest house, an 18th-century baroque palace in Meseberg, an hour’s drive north of Berlin. She’ll host the Spanish prime minister, Pedro Sanchez, at the chancellery on Tuesday.

Source: https://www.bnnbloomberg.ca/merkel-and-conte-show-common-front-on-massive-eu-recovery-fund-1.1464689

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Preparations for the aid mission were underway Sunday at the Chkalovsky military airport in Moscow. Russia was loading nine colossal Il-76 cargo planes with eight mobile medical teams, medical equipment, and aerosol disinfection trucks to send to Italy’s hardest-hit regions.

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Russia will also send 100 military members who specialize in virology and epidemics, Reuters reported, citing the Interfax news agency.

A military truck loads onto a Il-76 cargo plane in Chkalovsky military airport outside Moscow in preparation to deliver aid to Italy. (Alexei Yereshko, Russian Defense Ministry Press Service via AP)

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In photos released by Russian Defense Ministry Press Service, the doors of military trucks bore signs with heart-shaped Russian and Italian flags that read: “From Russia with love” in Russian, Italian and English.

Putin’s offer came on the same day Italy recorded its biggest spike in deaths from the COVID-19 virus of nearly 800, taking the death toll to 4,825 – the highest in the world – while the number of infections rose to 53,578. The exploding caseload has overwhelmed Italy’s doctors and nurses and left medical equipment in short supply.

A sign on a Russian military vehicle reads: “From Russia with love” in several languages. (Alexei Yereshko, Russian Defense Ministry Press Service via AP)

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Russia has so far reported very few confirmed coronavirus cases, noting just 306 infections and one death.

ITALIAN OLYMPIC GOLD MEDALISTS PROVIDE GRIM VIEW OF CORONAVIRUS-HIT REGION: ‘IT’S A WAR AT HOME’

As the U.S. and Europe struggle to contain the virus, nations once viewed as rivals are stepping up in the global coronavirus response.

Last week, Chinese President XI Jinping pledged to help Italy, moving quickly to send experts and desperately needed medical equipment, including millions of masks.

China’s rush to aid struggling countries, including Pakistan, Serbia, Liberia, the Philippines, and the Czech Republic, is seen by many as the communist nation’s attempt to defuse criticism that it mishandled the viral outbreak when it began in Wuhan late last year.

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The global pandemic has sickened at least 311,000 worldwide, killing 13,407 as of March 22.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

Source: https://www.foxnews.com/world/italy-coronavirus-aid-russia-putin

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Brussels (CNN) European Union leaders have averted the collapse of a key summit with a deal struck on migration in the early hours of Friday morning, which will see the burden of resettling refugees shared more widely among member states.

Italian Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte said the deal took “long negotiation, but from today Italy is no longer alone.”

READ THE MIGRANT DEAL

 

In a statement, the Council said it had agreed to adopt a “comprehensive approach to migration that combines more effective control of the EU’s external borders, increased external action and the internal aspects, in line with our principles and values.”

“The European Council is determined to continue and reinforce this policy to prevent a return to the uncontrolled flows of 2015 and to further stem illegal migration on all existing and emerging routes,” it said.

It added that more support would be provided to Italy and other Mediterranean countries, and “efforts to stop smugglers operating out of Libya or elsewhere should be further intensified.”

British Prime Minister Theresa May praised the agreement, saying it addressed many issues the UK had previously raised, and would “ensure that people aren’t making these dangerous journeys … in the hands of people smugglers.”

French President Emmanuel Macron said that despite suggestions a deal would be “impossible,” member states had succeeded in reaching a “European solution.”

Migration deadlock

Earlier, in an impassioned speech ahead of the summit, German Chancellor Angela Merkel said migration could be a “make or break” issue for the European Union.

“We cannot leave those countries where asylum seekers arrive to deal with (the problem) alone,” she said.

Merkel is facing considerable pressure at home to reduce the number of asylum seekers Germany accepts and agree to other restrictions on immigration, or risk a collapse of her ruling coalition.

She became the accidental architect of European migration policy in 2015 when she decided to allow hundreds of thousands of asylum seekers that had crossed the Balkans on foot into Germany.

Italy’s new government has closed ports to ships rescuing migrants daring the dangerous Mediterranean Sea crossing from north Africa, and taken a hardline approach on negotiations.

In an interview with CNN this week, Italian interior minister Matteo Salvini said “we need to revisit” the Dublin Regulation, which requires asylum seekers to be registered in the first European country they enter — regardless of whether they entered legally or otherwise.

The Dublin rules have put a huge amount of pressure on southern and eastern European nations, where the vast majority of refugees fleeing war and unrest in the Middle East and North Africa first enter the Union, and meant richer countries in north western Europe have borne less of the burden.

In an invitation letter sent to EU leaders ahead of the summit, Council leader Tusk said a failure to ensure full control of Europe’s external borders risked strengthening the hand of newly emerging populist political movements.

“More and more people are starting to believe that only strong-handed authority, anti-European and anti-liberal in spirit, with a tendency towards overt authoritarianism, is capable of stopping the wave of illegal migration,” he said.

“If people believe them, that only they can offer an effective solution to the migration crisis, they will also believe anything else they say. The stakes are very high. And time is short.”

Italian demonstrators hold a banner reading “against fascism, racism and sexism.” Right wing, anti immigrant parties recently took power in Italy.

Desperate situation

Despite a significant drop in the number of people seeking refuge in Europe, thousands of desperate migrants continue to make their way to European shores. Many make the perilous journey by sea.

As of June 6, there had been an estimated 785 deaths on the route this year, the International Organization for Migration (IOM) said, with the majority of the 33,400 migrants and refugees arriving through Greece and Italy.

This week, a search and rescue ship was stranded in the Mediterranean for five days with 233 migrants on board before it was finally permitted to dock in Malta.

European governments had wrangled over the responsibility for migrants arriving on the continent’s southern shores as conditions on the ship began to deteriorate.

Salvini, the Italian minister, had accused it of sailing under a “fake flag,” and Malta has impounded the ship while an investigation is carried out into whether it breached international law.

According to the International Maritime Organization, the Lifeline sails under a Dutch flag, supporting the ship’s assertion that it is correctly registered in the Netherlands.

Growing concern over migration comes at a time when Europe is already dealing with a lingering debt crisis, a rise in European populism, an escalating trade war with the United States, questions over Washington’s commitment to NATO and faltering negotiations for Brexit.

If Italy blocks a joint statement on these other important issues, the entire EU summit would be rendered ineffective.

CNN’s Atika Shubert, Nadine Schmidt, Laura Smith-Spark and James Griffiths contributed to this report.

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Source: https://edition.cnn.com/2018/06/28/europe/italy-eu-summit-migrant-crisis/index.html

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