After 16 hours of negotiating late into the night, the prime ministers and presidents of Europe gave up on the ‘Plan A’ idea of sending €210 billion in Russian frozen assets to help Ukraine - going instead with a ‘Plan B’ that will take out joint EU debt to send €90 billion to Kyiv. The 3am result is a victory for Belgium’s Bart De Wever and his ECR ally Italy’s Giorgia Meloni, and a defeat for Germany’s Friedrich Merz and Hungary’s Viktor Orban who were both overpowered. And of course, Moscow and Washington – who were both lobbying furiously against the use of frozen Russian assets – have also emerged as winners this morning.
Coming into the summit it was Belgian Prime Minister Bart De Wever who was in the hot seat. He was under pressure from most of his EU counterparts (especially the German chancellor and Polish prime minister) to consent to giving frozen Russian assets (most of which are in Belgium) to Ukraine. But he was concerned that Russia would eventually win a legal battle against this move and Belgium taxpayers would be on the hook to repay the €140 million at Euroclear. He wanted cast-iron unlimited guarantees that in that instance it would be the EU repaying the money and not Belgium. But Merz and others did not want to give a blank cheque.
De Wever might have relented but for Giorgia Meloni, the other prime minister in the Council from the hard-right MAGA-friendly European Conservatives and Reformists (ECR) group. She gave him a lifeline late last week when Italy penned a letter (along with Bulgaria and Malta) saying they too are opposed to using the frozen Russian assets. They two ECR leaders said the EU should instead jointly borrow eurobonds to fund Ukraine - a plan B that Commission President von der Leyen had half-heartedly drawn up but actively discouraged because the German Chancellor is staunchly opposed to collective EU debt. The division on this subject has been along familiar lines: the Protestant Northern member states were against it, the Catholic Southern countries were for it, and the Eastern countries were mixed.