The EU recovery plan – rather a “Merkron” than a “Hamiltonian” moment?

The recent Franco-German proposal for an EU recovery fund sparked a lively debate on possible changes in EU’s nature, suggesting that the plan to raise €500bn through common EU debt and hand it out as grants, not loans, marks an important shift in EU policy. But is this really a “Hamiltonian” moment, as some labelled it? In this week’s podcast Mark Leonard welcomes Lykke Friis, ECFR co-chair and director of the Danish think tank EUROPA; ECFR Council Members Coen van Oostrom, Dutch-based founder and chief executive officer of EDGE Technologies and Jean Pisani-Ferry, Senior Fellow at Bruegel to discuss the ambitious Franco-German proposal and what it means for the future of Europe.

This podcast was recorded on 26 May 2020.

Bookshelf:

• “Helmut Kohl: Eine politische Biographie” by Hans-Peter Schwarz
• “The Ride of a Lifetime” by Robert Iger
• “How to Fix Globalization—for Detroit, Not Davos” by Lawrence H. Summers in The American Interest