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Polish PM urges 'new Marshall Plan’ for Europe amid pandemic

21.04.2020 13:00
Poland’s prime minister on Tuesday called for a “new Marshall Plan” for Europe to aid the continent’s recovery from the coronavirus crisis.
Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki is seen on a television screen as he briefs reporters on Tuesday.
Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki is seen on a television screen as he briefs reporters on Tuesday.Photo: PAP/Rafał Guz

Speaking at a media briefing in Warsaw, Mateusz Morawiecki said that “there is no more important task for Europe today than to come up with what one can call a new Marshall Plan."

He was referring to an initiative modelled after the massive US aid programme for Europe after World War II.

Morawiecki said that the European Union, of which Poland has been a member since 2004, needed “a 21st-century Marshall Plan,” an ambitious set of budgetary and financial policies that would not only help save jobs amid the Covid-19 pandemic, but also enable the bloc “to graduate to a higher economic level after the crisis.”

Morawiecki told reporters that Europe needed policies to “reshape its economic order,” alongside efforts to retain and recreate jobs once the Covid-19 outbreak subsides.

He said he discussed “flexible ways of saving jobs" with European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen on Saturday, a meeting during which he said he also appealed for new funds from EU coffers to combat the crisis hurting the bloc's economies.

(gs/pk)

Source: PAP