The EU's latest row

Business Daily

BBC

News, Business

4.4 • 796 Ratings

🗓️ 1 December 2020

⏱️ 18 minutes

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Summary

A showdown looms between Hungary and Poland and the rest of the EU over the bloc's latest budget, which includes a Covid economic recovery fund worth nearly $900bn. Hungary and Poland blocked approval of the budget earlier in the month over a clause that ties funding with adherence to the rule of law in the bloc, something both countries have been accused of undermining. With the fate of businesses and livelihoods hanging in the balance, the two sides will meet in mid-December at a summit to discuss how they can break the impasse. We hear from Brussels-based reporter Beatriz Ríos, Zoltán Kovács, a spokesman for Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban and German MEP Dennis Radtke.

(Picture credit: Getty Images) .

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hello, I'm Manuela Saragossa. Welcome to Business Daily from the BBC.
0:06.8	Coming up, the European Union's big existential row that's pitting nationalists against federalists.
0:13.3	And it's all set to come to a head at an EU summit later this month.
0:17.3	It's not fair to become a member and then say, okay, I'm not content with the
0:22.2	roots. I'm not content with this. I'm not content with this. I only want to take the money.
0:26.8	This is not the way a union can be run. At stake is the European Union's massive COVID economic
0:32.7	recovery fund. Could Hungary and Poland derail it? So the situation is that we and the Poles have announced that
0:40.5	we are going to use our veto if things stay as they are. That's all here in Business Daily from the BBC.
0:50.7	Across the European Union, businesses have been brought to their knees by the COVID pandemic,
0:56.4	this Italian restaurateur, for instance.
1:01.6	We cannot know when this crisis will be over and when we'll be able to reopen,
1:06.2	because essentially, these are businesses built on people gathering.
1:09.9	With a different way of working, with social distancing and people not able to gather,
1:14.7	we won't be able to sustain the same rents, the same taxes, the same expenses.
1:22.5	And in the Netherlands, fishermen stuck with their catch.
1:27.0	The prices are way too low.
1:29.2	If you want to continue fishing, all the fish goes into the freezer houses.
1:33.2	These are also filling up, so you get no price at all.
1:37.8	But help is at hand.
1:39.9	There's a €750 billion EU economic recovery fund in the works.
1:44.4	It's part of the EU's 1.8 trillion euro budget for the next seven years.
1:48.8	The problem?
	...

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