Eurozone ministers to talk April 7 on virus response

Finance ministers of 19-country eurozone are to hold a videoconference on April 7 to try to forge an ecomic response to coronavirus crisis, its chairman said Monday.

" Eurogroup will meet April 7 to act on EUCO (European Council) Leaders' mandate to deliver proposals to reinforce our EU policy response to COVID-19," Mario Cente said on his Twitter account.

virtual meeting follows a March 26 videoconference of leaders of EU countries that told Eurogroup it has up to two weeks to come up with a joint response to crisis which risks plunging Europe into a deep recession.

That leaders' call, however, revealed deep divisions between fiscally austere rrn countries and more ecomically fragile sourn ones that wanted ecomic bazookas to be brought out to help m cope.

While Eurogroup consists of countries using euro, next week's videoconference will also be open to or EU countries.

Italy, Spain, France and six or euro-using countries last week called for an "instrument" to be created allowing a common eurozone bond issue, sometimes called "coronabonds".

That has long been a warhorse for indebted sourn EU countries such as Italy, but fiercely resisted by deficit-leery rrn countries.

latter group would prefer to see money shaken out of European Stability Mechanism which offers loans to countries in difficulty.

problem for countries such as Italy, member state that is most in red with a public debt of 130 percent of GDP, is strings that are attached. y also fear markets will baulk at negative impression caused by seeking such assistance.