Europe is facing multiple crises.

We are dealing with a worldwide health emergency, which is expected to trigger the biggest economic crisis since WW II.

A huge climate crisis is still ahead of us.

We need economic common European measures fitting these crises.

Beside of strong regulation and the development of European innovations we need economic tools fitting the challenges ahead.

Commission’s President Ursula von der Leyen has recently announced that the European Union needs a Marshall Plan in order to overcome the Corona-crisis and its economic effects.

The Vice President Valdis Dombrovskis, responsible for the economy, wants to trigger 1,5 trillion Euros in investments to boost our common European economy.

For solving the big conflict about Corona bonds the Commission is working on strengthening the new Multiannual Financial Framework (MFF).

At this point we don’t know, if the Commission will propose fresh money for the different programmes or new instruments like giving guarantees to the Member States through the European budget.

We Greens believe that we need both.

We need to make sure that the new MFF is not just a copy-paste version of the last Commission’s proposal with a facelift and neither an accommodation of the last proposal of Charles Michel in order to keep the Frugals on board. We need more. For this, we need to think out of the box.

Here are some things to consider:

1. We are already very late in our timeline. A political agreement between the institutions (preceded by an agreement between Member States) would have to come soon, then negotiations with the Parliament and so forth. It gets less and less likely that there will be a ready and gift-wrapped MFF for the European Union by the end of this year. We need a preliminary solution for the year 2021 in order for the programs to be continued. The European Parliament has been asking the Commission since October 2019 to be ready to prepare a contingency plan in case the negotiations fail until the end of 2020. Now, with the Corona-crisis things are getting more complicated and much more urgent. The Commission has to do their homework.

We need a strong response to the Corona crisis.

Instead of a normal MFF starting 2021 it makes sense to agree on a contingency/urgency response package starting with an Draft Amending Budget with fresh money already for this year and a package to follow up for 2021.

We need more spending on research programs and health care on the European level.

2. We need to combine the MFF with an adequate crisis response. Call it Marshall-Plan or recovery measures; the MFF has to include a big investment stimulus package for the next two years. It can be a prolongation of the current MFF, but with massive new investments partly from the European Budget as well as some debt instruments like giving guarantees to the Member States as some Commissioners are already testing in public.

3. We need a strengthened long-term budget. Our Marshall Plan for rebuilding our economy, fighting poverty and becoming climate neutral is the Green Deal. It is a program for a century.

We need to make sure that the MFF is aligned with the Paris Agreement, as the European Parliament has been demanding. We need to make the European budget more independent from the Member States. So that we can react much faster on pandemics like Corona. The tool are strong flexibility instruments, Own Resources and a strengthened European Parliament in the budgetary process.

We would like to strengthen research and public authorities like the European Disease Prevention Centre.

We want to make the Union fit for future crises.

Europe can‘t continue as it has been before Corona.

We Greens are fighting for a strong European budget and a strong Union.