BRUSSELS – European Union leaders are set to weigh Thursday the damage the coronavirus has inflicted on health care systems and the lives of around half a billion citizens across the bloc as they struggle to devise a more robust plan to resuscitate their ravaged economies.
As businesses cautiously open their doors in some European countries and citizens begin to venture out, the 27 leaders will endorse a series of urgent spending measures and debate a massive recovery plan they hope to introduce in coming weeks.
The summit — their fourth video-conference since the outbreak struck northern Italy two months ago — comes at an extremely delicate time, with more than 100,000 Europeans known to have died, according to the European Centre for