Leaders of EU states, have failed to proffer a much-awaited recovery plan at a video-summit.

“No consensus is reached today. But it is an answer that we will have to provide, and I believe that our Europe has no future if we cannot provide this answer,” French President Emmanuel Macron said following the summit.

“If we let part of Europe fall, all of Europe will fall with it,” he added.

Macron revealed that disagreements over the size and shape of the rescue package remained.

In previous video-summits on the pandemic, one of the sticking points is the “European recovery bond” promoted by Italy and seven other eurozone states, but not favored by some others.

Italy wanted the bond to lift member states out of a recession and increase spending on healthcare.

Macron said that the EU must provide budgetary transfers and not just loans to its worst-hit regions and sectors to help restart the economy.

“At the moment we are living through, these transfers must be transfers by subsidies, real budgetary transfers,” said Macron.

Nevertheless, leaders of the 27-bloc agreed that a recovery fund is “needed and urgent,” said President of the European Council Charles Michel in his conclusions on the meeting. But no specific amount of the fund was unveiled.

Michel said the recovery fund “shall be of a sufficient magnitude, targeted towards the sectors and geographical parts of Europe most affected, and be dedicated to dealing with this unprecedented crisis.”

As a result of the video-summit, leaders tasked the European Commission to “analyse the exact needs and to urgently come up with a proposal that is commensurate with the challenge we are facing.”

They also mandated the European Commission to link the recovery fund with the bloc’s 2021-2027 budget.

Ursula von der Leyen, the President of the European Commission, said the EU’s executive arm would start working on the details.