’’Europe must demonstrate that it is able to respond to this historic call,” Italian Premier Giuseppe Conte said late Saturday. “I will fight until the last drop of sweat, until the last gram of energy, to obtain a strong, vigorous, cohesive European response.”

Spain and Italy alone account for more than half of the world’s death toll, with hundreds of new victims every day. 

Sánchez warned that the bloc’s southern members can’t bear another round of the hard-love austerity applied in the 2008 recession, when countries like Greece and Portugal were forced to request a bailout and slash their budgets and social services.

“We must not repeat the mistakes of past crises, otherwise the next debt crisis risks coming right after corona,” Austrian Finance Minister Gernot Bluemel told the Austria Press Agency on Sunday. “We should use the existing instruments before we build new constructions that have long-term effects” on European economic stability.