The European Union needs to put its multi-year budget at the centre of the bloc's economic recovery plan, EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said.
Von der Leyen, a former German defence minister, said that the larger seven-year budget should be "a European answer" to a crisis that will sharply shrink economic output this year in EU countries. "The next European budget has to be the European answer to the corona crisis," von der Leyen told a news conference with EU Council President Charles Michel, who will chair a video conference summit of the bloc's leaders' on 23 April. "To be able to do that, it has to be different, completely different from normal European budgets," she added.