German Chancellor Angela Merkel delivered a long-awaited answer to French President Emmanuel Macron’s ambitious call for European Union reforms Sunday, offering olive branches on investment and help for debt-mired eurozone member states. Merkel told the Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung ahead of a crunch EU summit this month that Germany as the eurozone’s top economy would support an investment budget whose total would be “at the lower end of the double-digit billions of euros range”. “We need quicker economic convergence between the member states,” she said. The EU summit is seen as the last chance before European elections in May 2019 to get a few tangible projects on the road and demonstrate to frustrated voters Europe’s ability to deliver on its promises. Macron has repeatedly expressed impatience with what he sees as foot-dragging by Merkel, who was tied up with five months of coalition building after an inconclusive general election in September.

Source: The Guardian June 03, 2018 09:33 UTC