Gentiloni at Eurogroup the great opportunity offered by Next Generation EU

This was our first occasion to take stock of the economic situation since July, when we discussed the Commission’s summer forecast. The GDP figures for the second quarter published by Eurostat this week confirmed that we are in a deep economic contraction in the euro area, with output dropping by 11.8%. But they also confirmed that this contraction is deeply uneven, with the quarterly falls in GDP ranging from around 4% to around 18% in different countries. The risk of fragmentation that we were considering when we decided the recovery strategy is, in fact, there.