From the Centre for European Reform, this is the CER podcast.

It is a critical moment.

If we do not act with urgency, we would then severely undermine the liberal order.

Brexit means Brexit, and we're going to make a success of it.

The wind is back in Europe's sales.

We have now a window of opportunity, but it will not stay open forever.

Welcome to the latest edition of the Centre for European Reforms podcast.

Today, I, John Springford, Deputy Director of the CR, am joined by Christian Odendale, the chief economist.

And we're going to talk a bit about two things.

The first thing is the Recovery Fund proposal, which Angela Merkel and Emmanuel Macron

came out with on Monday. And then we're going to talk a bit about our new piece of research,

which looks at how COVID-19 is going to drive economic divergence within the European Union.

And I should introduce by saying that we started writing this piece about four or five weeks ago

with a view to thinking, okay, one, how bad is COVID-19 going to be in terms of divergence within the EU?

And two, if it's going to be bad, that we should write something that's going to prompt a recovery fund, which is meaningful, that involves meaningful transfers and doesn't rely upon the usual financial

chicanery that we have come to expect so far.

And we were just about to publish and then Macron and Merkel came out with their proposal,

which has necessitated a bit of a rewrite.

Obviously, both of us think that the proposal has quite a lot of potential and is something

which our research for the last few weeks certainly suggests is needed.

But we thought we'd just start with the proposal first and Christian I think

you're going to take us through what the proposal is one and two what are the

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