EU leaders to meet July 17-18 to seek deal on budget, recovery fund

2-day summit will see European Council gather in person.

EU leaders will gather in person for a summit on July 17 and 18 in Brussels to try to reach a deal on the bloc’s long-term budget and coronavirus recovery package, European Council President Charles Michel’s spokesman said Tuesday.

“On 17 and 18 July @eucopresident will call an extraordinary #EUCO on the Recovery Package and the MFF. The physical meeting will start on the 17th at 10am in the Europa building,” spokesman Barend Leyts tweeted.

Michel said following a virtual summit on Friday that leaders would convene in mid-July, hopefully in person.

He and other leaders are due to attend a commemorative ceremony for victims of COVID-19 in Madrid the day before the July summit.

During Friday’s videoconference, EU leaders spent about four hours in which they mostly repeated their existing positions on the European Commission’s proposal for a €1.1 trillion seven-year EU budget and associated €750 billion recovery fund.

The summit will seek to reach agreement on a range of issues that remain unresolved, including how recovery money should be allocated, and any conditions to be set on accessing the funds. Many other disagreements are also outstanding, including the overall size of the package and the proportion of grants and loans within it.

Earlier Tuesday, Commission President Ursula von der Leyen told senior members of the European Parliament of plans for a summit on July 17. The announcement that the summit is planned to last for two days suggests Michel expects long negotiating sessions as part of an effort to reach a deal.

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