The risk of the EU collapsing over the coronavirus crisis "is real," Italian Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte warned Thursday ahead of a crunch meeting of the bloc's finance ministers.

Conte told the BBC that the pandemic and the resulting economic and social consequences pose "a big challenge to the existence of Europe." He warned: "If our response isn't strong and unified, if Europe fails to come up with a monetary and financial policy adequate for the biggest challenge since the Second World War, for sure not only Italians but European citizens will be deeply disappointed."

His appeal for unity raises the stakes as finance ministers meet Thursday afternoon via videoconference to discuss financial assistance to Italy, Spain and other countries to cushion the economic fallout of the crisis. Italy has been pushing strongly for pooling debt of all eurozone countries via so-called corona bonds — a proposal rejected by Germany, the Netherlands, Austria and Finland.

Conte's warning was echoed by former European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker, who told Austrian newspaper Der Standard on Thursday that if European leaders were giving citizens the impression that they were entrenching themselves in corners, "then the European spirit is in danger."

However, even though Juncker said he backs an Italian call for corona bonds “in principle,” he was advising against them because agreeing upon and implementing them would take “at least six months.”

A meeting of the finance ministers earlier this week broke down after a compromise proposal championed by Germany failed to receive unanimous backing.

"That takes too long. But now there is urgency,” Juncker said. “It would not do justice to this urgency if we concentrated on dealing with this instrument of corona bonds … and that is why all the measures relating to the ESM, which we invented in 2010, are the right ones,” he added, referring to the European Stability Mechanism, set up to help eurozone countries in difficulty.

The ministers were also urged to bolster spending and other fiscal responses to the crisis by European Central Bank President Christine Lagarde. "If not all countries are cured, the others will suffer. Solidarity is in fact self-interest," she wrote in an op-ed published Thursday in several European newspapers.

A meeting of the finance ministers earlier this week broke down after a compromise proposal championed by Germany — including around €500 billion of financial assistance via the ESM, the European Investment Bank and a proposed unemployment reassurance scheme, plus additional support via the EU budget — failed to receive unanimous backing, despite France indicating it was willing to throw its weight behind the plan.

Resistance to the proposal came particularly from the Netherlands, whose Finance Minister Wopke Hoekstra insisted that economic help via the ESM should be linked to "certain economic conditions," which Italy categorically rejects as it fears increased fiscal oversight from Brussels.

German Finance Minister Olaf Scholz said Wednesday that using the ESM "shouldn’t mean that commissioners will come or a troika will enter the countries," as when the Commission, ECB and International Monetary Fund sent officials to oversee Greece's implementation of its bailout conditions during the last financial crisis.

Scholz also fired an indirect broadside against Hoekstra by saying that linking ESM credit lines "to very fundamental debates on pension systems, tax systems and labor markets ... [is] not productive and not appropriate."

Another attack on the Dutch government position came from European Commission Executive Vice President Frans Timmermans, from the opposition Labor Party, who penned an op-ed in Dutch newspaper de Volskrant on Wednesday, writing that a "retreat into national self-righteousness and mutual finger-pointing will not solve anything," He warned that "the EU as we know it will not survive" such an attitude.

In a veiled endorsement of corona bonds, Timmermans wrote that the current crisis "calls for new instruments, showing that also in Europe the strongest shoulders bear the heaviest burden."

Maïa de La Baume contributed reporting.

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