"Now I can go to the bank?," asked Portuguese prime minister António Costa to EU Commission president Ursula von der Leyen, as the EU executive approved his country's national Covid-19 recovery plan.
"You can go to the bank," quipped von der Leyen in response.
The comments are likely to cause some wincing in the capitals of the so-called 'frugal' EU countries, which have been frustrated with the idea of subsidising spending by what they see as less fiscally-disciplined southern...
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Eszter Zalan is a Hungarian journalist who worked for Brussels-based news portal EUobserver specialising in European politics, focusing on populism and Brexit.