EU will find room for convergence on new funding instruments - Breton

PARIS (Reuters) - The European Union's industry chief Thierry Breton said on Thursday he was convinced that the bloc's states would be able to forge a consensus around how to find new funding instruments to help the EU fight the coronavirus crisis.

"I am convinced we will be able to converge," Breton told France Inter radio.

In March, France, Italy, Spain and six other countries called for work on a common debt instrument issued by a European institution to cushion the effects of the pandemic, which is on course to trigger a global recession.

However, Germany and the Netherlands have voiced opposition to such a mechanism, and the nine states who supported it did not specify how it would work.

(Reporting by Sudip Kar-Gupta; Editing by Alex Richardson)