BRUSSELS – There are limits to videoconferencing. When there is a lot of money at stake, people like to look each other in the eye.
So on Friday, leaders from 27 European Union nations will be meeting face-to-face for the first since February despite the dangers of the coronavirus pandemic — simply to try to carve up a potential package of 1.85 trillion euros ($2.1 trillion) among themselves, and, just as importantly, see who will pay in the most.
In perhaps the first such major meeting of leaders since the COVID-19 outbreak hit the world, the stakes were just too high to maintain extreme social distancing. “You can feel the mood, as it were," Germany's Europe minister, Michael Roth, said of such flesh-and-blood summits. “I wouldn't claim.