Corona era: EU heads end second day of COVID bailout haggling with no deal

Brussels, Belgium: European Union leaders wrapped the second day of negotiations late on Saturday, July 18 on a plan to pump hundreds of billions of euros into their economies ravaged by coronavirus and would resume on Sunday, July 19, a spokesman for the bloc said, with a deal proving elusive.

A stand-off between EU leaders at a summit in Brussels threatened to derail plans for a massive stimulus fund to breathe life into their coronavirus-hammered economies. The budget commissioner of the bloc's executive reminded the leaders - who wore masks and kept their distance from each other - that COVID-19 was still among them and they needed to act.

With the pandemic dealing Europe its worst economic shock since World War Two, leaders gathered on Friday, July 17 to haggle over a proposed 750 billion euro ($856 billion) recovery fund and a 2021-27 EU budget of more than 1 trillion euros.

But a group of wealthy and fiscally "frugal" northern states led by the Netherlands have blocked progress in the first face-to-face EU summit since spring lockdowns across the continent. They favour repayable loans rather than free grants for the hard-hit indebted economies mostly on the Mediterranean rim, and they want control over how the funds are spent.