The European Union’s leaders needed to “rise to the occasion” and take difficult decisions to make sure Ukraine could keep holding off Russia’s invading army, Poland’s prime minister Donald Tusk has said.
The choice on the table at a major EU summit in Brussels was between “money today or blood tomorrow”, the Polish leader said. “I’m not talking only about Ukraine, I’m talking about Europe … I think all European leaders have to finally rise to this occasion,” Mr Tusk said.
High-level political discussions have begun to unblock opposition to a plan financing a €90 billion loan to Ukraine, by tapping cash belonging to the Russian state, which has been “frozen” inside the EU since the start of the Ukraine war.
The plan is seen as Europe’s best hope of preventing Ukraine from running out of money by the middle of next year, which would jeopardise efforts to hold off Russian forces’ slow advance as the war heads towards its fifth year.
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The EU’s 27 leaders will be asked to support the legally complex loan that would keep Ukraine in the fight for at least another two years.
The loan would be backed by Russian central bank cash that has been sitting inside EU financial institutions and banks, frozen by economic sanctions the union slapped on Moscow in the early weeks of the war.
The money would be paid back to Russia if Moscow ever agrees to compensate Ukraine for the destruction caused by its invasion.
[ The €90bn question: will Belgium sign up to frozen assets plan for Ukraine?Opens in new window ]
Belgium, where the vast majority of the assets are held on ice, has opposed the loan idea. The Belgian government wants other EU states to provide it with “unlimited” guarantees that any costs from legal risks or financial retribution from Russia will be covered by the 27-state union as a whole.
The European Council summit will centre on whether enough assurance can be provided to bring Belgium on board with the plan.
António Costa, the former Portuguese prime minister who is chairing the EU summit, said Europe needed to put Ukraine in a strong position in peace talks.
Mr Costa said the EU leaders would not leave Brussels without settling a financial package of aid to fund Ukraine.
It is understood the Trump administration has sought to put pressure on several European governments behind the scenes.
A previous draft of a peace plan worked out by US and Russian officials had eyed up the frozen assets as an important chip in ceasefire discussions. Moscow wants the money returned to its coffers as a condition of a truce.
The loan drawing on frozen Russian assets only needs a majority of EU states to be approved, rather than the unanimous agreement of all 27. However, several leaders have said the plan could not go ahead as long as Belgium remained opposed to it.
Speaking on his way into the summit, German chancellor Friedrich Merz said he did not believe there was any “better option” to using Russia’s state assets trapped in Europe.
Hungary’s far right prime minister Viktor Orban said using the assets to fund a loan to Ukraine would in practice mean Europe was “marching into the war”.
Mr Orban has made it clear he would block a separate plan for a joint EU loan to Ukraine, as he opposes the union sending aid to Ukraine.
“The aggressor has to pay for the damages done, not European taxpayers,” said Estonian prime minister Kristen Michal.
Portugal’s prime minister Luís Montenegro said the summit of EU leaders was one of the most important in years.
Luc Frieden, Luxembourg’s prime minister, said tapping the frozen assets for a loan was something that had “never been done before”. There were complex legal issues to pick through, he said.
“If we take a European decision that affects one member state, we need to share the risk. We don’t know how Russia might react,” he said.
Speaking in Brussels, Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskiy said his country was at war and faced “bigger risks” than those Belgium was worried about.
Discussions have been taking place between diplomats and officials for weeks in Brussels, to provide the Belgian government with solid assurances that EU states will jointly cover the cost of practically all foreseeable legal or financial fallout from the loan.
