TWO SUMMITS ABOUT THE CORONA CRISIS


Yesterday two important Summits about the Corona-pandemic took place. One was in the G-20 group, an organisation of 19 countries from around the world and the EU. Saudi Arabia is its president this year. The participants are the heads of state and government and the directors of the central banks from all members.
The other summit, the European Council, took place in the EU – with Charles Michel as its president.
Both summits took place via video conference.
It was agreed at the two summits that this global crisis must be addressed globally, not by every country on its own.  A very close cooperation is needed now during the crisis as well as afterwards.  All initiatives taken until now were supported.  And a number of plans were agreed for the future.
When the EU is concerned it was agreed to strengthen the external borders further and also to ensure that the temporary closures of some internal borders between the member states have to be managed in a very flexible way – and not last longer than absolutely necessary.  The joint fight against fake news about the crisis will be intensified, and joint purchase of medical equipment will be strengthened.  It was also agreed to follow the recommendations from the WHO to increase testing as much as possible. The joint research efforts will be strengthened too, also in cooperation with the G7 and G20 countries.  And the EU Commission was asked to start working on an “exit strategy” on what to do after the crisis ends.  There was also support to Charles Michel’s proposal to make a special European Crisis Management Centre.

But there is still no agreement on how to finance some of the huge costs of the crisis. Nine member states have suggested that so-called EURO-bonds should be part of the solution. But in particular Germany and The Netherlands are against that idea.
It was also yesterday that Commission president, Ursula von der Leyen, make a strong and personal speech to a special session of the European Parliament about Europe and the crisis.   You can follow the speech in this link – the text as well as the video of the speech:
https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/en/speech_20_532   



Follow-up to my suggestions yesterday about genealogy:
I have been made aware of another very interesting and useful service, which to a large extent is free to use:

It is called GEANET – and it has this web address:  https://en.geneanet.org/   
This service holds information about 7 million persons, has 4 million members and shows about 1,2 million “trees” of families.   Try it.  Perhaps you all of a sudden will find very interesting information about your family.



Finally, a bit of follow-up to my words yesterday that the world after all is much more than the present pandemic crisis.  My daily comments will and should reflect that. I intend in the coming days and weeks to make comments in relation to the Polish presidential elections on April 10 ( if they take place ), the situation on the Greek-European border to Turkey, and initiatives in relation to the refugee situation.  We also have to come back to EU’s budget for the coming seven years.
There is always more than enough important topics to deal with.


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