Anton Rop, former Prime Minister of Slovenia and former Vice President of the EIB discusses with David Rinaldi, FEPS Director of Studies and Policy, about the economic and financial difficulties that the pandemic has brought about across Europe. Mr Rop is worried that in the absence of a strong European intervention to relaunch the economies of the countries most affected by the health crisis, convergence in Europe will seriously be at risk; with potentially negative effects on integration and inequality. The assessment of some of the measures so far taken, such as the SURE, is positive but the former Slovenian Prime Minister points out that a far more ambitious recovery plan is needed, with a strong Green Deal and the full involvement of the EIB investment firepower. Specifically, in order to overcome the political impasse around debt mutualisation, he suggests scaling up the project-bonds engineering that has already been used for infrastructure investment.