Economy of the European Union

Eurozone governments gave their final approval on Friday to the first part of a 540 billion-euro rescue plan for states hit hard by the coronavirus pandemic, although other elements of the rescue package have yet to be agreed on.

Eurozone finance ministers agreed on Friday to offer cheap credit lines that can be tapped until the end of 2022 by countries hit by the coronavirus pandemic, two European officials said.

"All agreed. The program can be used until the end of 2022," one of the officials said.

The European Central Bank has asked staff to study whether it should buy "junk" corporate bonds as it comes under growing pressure to help the economy cope with the fallout from the coronavirus pandemic, four sources told Reuters.

The European Union's top court said on Friday it alone has the power to decide whether EU bodies are breaching the bloc's rules, in a rebuke to Germany's highest court, which this week rejected its judgment approving the ECB's trillion-euro bond purchases.

The European Commission's forecast for a 9.7 percent economic contraction in Greece is not only the biggest among all eurozone members, but also considerably more pessimistic than the official forecast by the government - which Athens attributes to Brussels not factoring in Greece's relief measures.

The European Central Bank pushed back on Thursday at a German court's attempt to curb its power to buy government bonds, saying it was "more determined than ever" to pull the eurozone out of its worst economic crisis in nearly a century.

Eurozone finance ministers hope to agree on Friday on the final details of credit lines from the ESM bailout fund for governments in need of cheap cash to deal with the coronavirus pandemic, so that the money can be available from June.

Greece will raise only a fraction of what it initially expected from privatizations this year, as the coronavirus downturn has forced it to put planned asset sales on hold to avoid low offers.

Romania's economy is projected to contract by 6% in 2020 after many years of robust growth, whereas the general government deficit is forecast to increase to around 9.2% of the GDP in 2020, according to the European Economic Forecast - Spring 2020, published by the European Commission (CE) on Wednesday.

The eurozone economy will contract by a record 7.7 percent this year because of the Covid-19 pandemic and inflation will almost disappear while public debt and budget deficits will balloon, the European Commission forecast on Wednesday.