The European Union will host an online conference on May 4 for governments and organisations to pledge money to support the search for a vaccine to the novel coronavirus, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said on Wednesday.

"To support this global initiative, funding is needed," Von der Leyen told a joint news conference with European Council President Charles Michel. "I hope that countries and organisations all over the world will respond to this call," she said.

"The next European budget has to be the European answer to the corona crisis," she added, saying that a European budget that with all its might is able to leverage the necessary money for a huge investment initiative in order to really restart the economic process.

"We're not talking about a billion (euros), we're talking about a trillion, looking at the investment initiative that has to be done," she stressed. 

Charles Michel said leaders and governments will discuss a reworking of plans for the 2021-27 EU joint budget during a video conference summit on April 23. 

The EU is discussing how to finance recovery from a deep recession that is expected to follow the pandemic. 

Meanwhile, the European Commission is urging EU states to coordinate as they begin to ease lockdown measures, warning that failure to do so could result in new spikes of the coronavirus epidemic.

Several EU states have announced plans or have already begun to relax restrictions imposed to contain the outbreak, as pressure grows to revive their battered economies.

(With input from Reuters)