EU recovery fund should favor countries worst hit by pandemic – Czech PM Babis

Allocations from the EU’s proposed recovery fund should be based on the downturn in countries’ growth due to the coronavirus crisis and not on the basis of their past economic performance, according to Czech PM Andrej Babis.

“We will see the impact of the pandemic next year and this impact will be mainly in GDP. So this should be the most, the biggest criteria,” he said on Friday on arrival for a summit of European Union leaders in Brussels to discuss a joint recovery plan.

The Czech Republic “was one of the best on unemployment, one of the best concerning debt to GDP and also we have growth - and it is not possible to penalize successful countries because they were successful,” Reuters quoted him as saying. “Money should be distributed correctly and fairly,” the PM added.