Commission President Ursula von der Leyen has said she would not leave the European Union summit starting Thursday without resolving further funding for Ukraine. Council President António Costa made a similar statement. Financial aid to Ukraine is the number one item on the summit’s agenda with two options on the table.
EU leaders will try to agree on how to lend billions of euros of desperately needed cash to Ukraine in a meeting that is seen as a critical test of the group’s strength. The EU sees Russia’s war as a threat to its own security and wants to keep Ukraine financed and fighting.
Frozen assets or loan?
The European Commission has proposed using frozen Russian central bank assets that are mostly held in a Belgian clearing house to secure a huge loan to Kyiv. Belgium, however, is concerned the plan is not legally watertight while other states including Italy or Czechia have expressed concern.
According to Reuters, Belgian Prime Minister Bart De Wever told his country’s parliament early on Thursday that he had not yet seen guarantees that answered his concerns on legal and liquidity risks. “Financing plans are still changing,” Mr De Wever added.
Another option would be for each willing EU country itself to raise money on the market and pass it on to Kyiv. However, that would mean a rise in the already high debt and deficit levels and a lack of longer-term financing certainty for Ukraine.
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We have a simple choice: either money today or blood tomorrow. And I am not talking about Ukraine only, I am talking about Europe. – Donald Tusk, Prime Minister of Poland
“Now we have a simple choice: either money today or blood tomorrow. And I am not talking about Ukraine only, I am talking about Europe,” Poland’s Prime Minister Donald Tusk said ahead of the summit.
The stakes are high because without the EU’s financial help Ukraine will run out of money in the second quarter of next year and most likely lose the war to Russia, which the EU fears would bring closer the threat of Russian aggression against the EU.
This is a developing story
