The intergovernmental body voted in favour of a €37 billion budget to save the countries and companies most affected by the crisis. It also lifted the obligation for airlines to maintain flights.
The budget will come from the EU's structural funds. It will be redistributed to the regions and countries most affected, according to needs, and to health structures, small and medium-sized enterprises and other structures most affected by the crisis.
The sectors that will benefit most from this aid will be tourism, transport and retail, as the most severely disrupted sectors at present, as stressed by President of the European Commission Ursula von der Leyen.
Another important step is that the European Parliament has agreed to suspend the obligation to maintain "ghost" flights so that airlines can keep slots at airports. The "use it or lose it" law had indeed led to the appearance of flights operating "empty" because of the Covid-19 crisis, which led to a series of travel and movement restrictions in an attempt to eradicate the pandemic on European soil.
The lifting of this law will allow unused routes to be shut down from the end of March to the end of October 2020, relieving airlines of this obligation, which had a considerable cost, as well as reducing CO2 emissions on European soil.
