EU ready to facilitate state aid against coronavirus- antitrust chief

European Union governments may need to provide state aid on "a much larger scale" due to the coronavirus crisis and the bloc's executive will put in place procedures to deal with this very quickly, the EU's anti-trust chief said on Friday.

Magrethe Vestager told a news conference that the European Commission would put place a compensation scheme for the tourism, hotel and transport sectors and would enable governments to ensure that banks have adequate liquidity.

She said there were many ways that governments could help without needing state aid approval, and gave as examples, providing wage subsidies, or suspending corporate tax payments or value-added tax payments. (reporting by John Chalmers; editing by Francesco Guarascio)