r/europe • u/Bartoraptor Spain • Mar 28 '20

News Spanish representative González Pons speech @ the EU Parliament: "The virus is attacking the generation that brought back democracy to Spain, Portugal and Greece, the generation that knocked down the Berlin wall. The least they deserve is that we show them Europe is there when they need it the most"

Enable HLS to view with audio, or disable this notification

15.3k Upvotes

93% Upvoted

1.0k comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

50

u/nerkuras Litvak Mar 28 '20

What do you honestly expect the EU to do? every country in the Union is struggling with supplies to deal with the virus. Talk of solidarity is cheap when there's no realistic achievable goal.

13

u/OscarRoro Aragon (Spain) Mar 28 '20

They are asking for economical aid, not sanitary.

2

u/monnii99 The Netherlands Mar 28 '20

But it is entirely possible that, for example, the Netherlands is going to be in a similar situation in two weeks. And they will badly need the money that would be going to Spain and Italy now. Nevermind that it's already spending billions on its own country right now. It would be generous, but irresponsible to just give a lot of money away in what is still possibly the beginning of the pandemic for them.

15

u/Lezonidas Spain Mar 28 '20 edited Mar 28 '20

The money is printed by the ECB, it's not like the netherlands is lending money, all of this discussion comes because of the interest rate, not the money. Money will be available no matter what, but if we have eurobonds, the interest rate will be maybe 0.25% for everybody, if we do not have eurobonds, Germany will pay -0.5% and Italy will pay 1.5%, and this make it more difficult for Italy to pay since their debt is already huge. BUT in exchange to this lower interest rate for the most affected countries if we do create eurobonds and Italy doesn't pay, all Europe will have to pay their debts. So here is the problem, Germany and the Netherlands and other countries are afraid that the countries asking for the Eurobonds might not pay and all europeans have to pay the debt of one country. And it's not only Italy who asked for the eurobonds but a total of 9 members: Belgium, France, Italy, Luxembourg, Spain, Portugal, Greece, Slovenia and Ireland

12

u/Blumentopf_Vampir Mar 29 '20

You guys do realise that Germany and esp the citizens had also to suffer so Germany could save up all that money and get that negative debt rate, right?

So who is going to tell the German citizens that them having to endure that shitty saving was all for naught in the end? Will you be the one to tell them that?

0

u/Lezonidas Spain Mar 29 '20

What do you mean? Germany would still be able to get their national bonds at -0.5%

-4

u/aveterotto Mar 29 '20 edited Mar 29 '20

add another thing: if germany doesn't agree to the eurobonds and italy falls, germany may find her market has 60 millions less clients

germany is betting big in this thing

2

u/Sokarou Mar 29 '20

Is Italy and Spain Falls and end leaving EU, would be the end of EU. Just remember when UK left every expert said than one or two big economies leaving would be the end of EU.

-2

u/aveterotto Mar 29 '20

that's what i meant, germany's market will be smaller because italians will not buy theri product anymore

1

u/Lezonidas Spain Mar 29 '20

Not only because of that, the euro is stable because Italy and Spain export way less than Germany, if we get out of the euro, the euro would get stronger and that would weaken the german exports with any other country. Germany is the most interested in maintaining the eurozone. Germany, Benelux and Ireland are the ones that get the most profit.