A new alliance of ministers, chief executive officers and researchers urged the European Union to build its recovery package after the coronavirus crisis around the Green Deal strategy of sustainable growth.

The group, an initiative led by Pascal Canfin, a French member of the European Parliament, is pushing to mobilize investment in projects that would put the EU on track to meet its goal of becoming the world’s first climate-neutral continent by the middle of the century. The bloc’s leaders, who last month pledged a green focus in an exit strategy from the coronavirus crisis, are set to discuss next week measures worth more than half a trillion euros...

Its Green Deal, which was launched shortly before the virus outbreak, ... put[s] Europe’s ambitions on climate change ahead of most other major polluters...

The European Commission ... expects the spreading contagion to cause a deep recession this year. The recovery plan should enshrine the fight against climate change as “the core of the economic strategy,” said the members of the alliance..

“If we relaunch the economy in the wrong direction, we will hit the climate crisis wall,” said Canfin... “We need to unite all the energies for a green recovery.”