Lisbon, Mar. 27, 2020 (Lusa) - Portugal's prime minister, António Costa, has described as "repugnant" and contrary to the spirit of the European Union comments by the finance minister of the Netherlands calling for Spain to be investigated for its proclaimed lack of budgetary capacity to cope with the Covid-19 pandemic.

"This speech is repugnant in the context of a European Union," Costa when asked about the statement by the minister in question, Wopke Hoekstra, at a news conference on Thursday night following the day's extraordinary European Council. "And that's exactly the expression. Repugnant."

Hoekstra had said in a videoconference with ministers and heads of government from the 27 member states that the European Commission should investigate countries, such as Spain, that say they lack the budgetary scope to deal with the effects of the crisis caused by the new coronavirus, despite the fact that the euro zone economy has been growing for seven years straight, according to EU sources quoted in the European press.

According to Costa, Hoekstra's statement "is absolutely thoughtless"; he accused him of a "recurrent pettiness" that "completely undermines ... the spirit of the EU and is a threat to the EU's future." If the EU wants to survive, he went on, "it is unacceptable that any political leader from any country should be able to provide such a response to a pandemic such as the one we are experiencing.

"If we do not respect each other and if we do not understand that, in the face of a common challenge, we have to be able to respond together, then nobody has understood anything about what the European Union is," he stressed.

Costa said it was "a good time" for everyone in the Union "to understand that it was not Spain that created the virus" or "that imported the virus", pointing out that "if any EU country thinks it will solve the problem of the virus by leaving the virus loose in another country, it is very much mistaken.

"Because in an EU based on the freedom of movement, of people and goods, on open borders, the virus knows no borders", he said.

MDR/ARO // ARO.

Lusa