As one of the architects of the Reparations Loan, the financing option for Ukraine based on the exploitation of the Bank of Russia’s assets immobilised in the European Union (see EUROPE 13765/1), the German Chancellor, Friedrich Merz, launched a ‘campaign to convince’ by travelling to Brussels on Friday 5 December in a bid to convince his Belgian counterpart, Bart De Wever, during a dinner to be attended by the President of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, to back this Loan.
The presentation of the legislative proposal opens “a new chapter” in the consultations, said the EU institution’s spokeswoman, Paula Pinho. According to her, the Commission has responded to Belgium’s concerns about the Reparations Loan by broadening the “scope of application”, mobilising all public assets frozen in the EU and granting “additional safeguards”, in particular to ensure the availability of massive liquidity, if necessary.
On Friday, the Member States’ ambassadors to the EU (Coreper) began “substantial” discussions on the basis of the Commission’s two options. The Danish Presidency of the Council of the EU has promised to pull out all the stops to ensure a final decision at the European Council meeting on Thursday 18 and Friday 19 December.
Speaking before the Belgian Parliament on Thursday, Mr De Wever acknowledged that the Reparations Loan proposal addresses the three preconditions set by his country – pooling of all risks, protection against liquidity risk, and use of all Russian public assets tied up in the EU – but without fully meeting them.
“We are prepared to make sacrifices, but we are not prepared to do the impossible”, said the Belgian Prime Minister. He also questioned the EU’s political, economic and military strategy, which only envisages a Ukrainian victory on all fronts. “Nobody in this assembly thinks that the war will end this way”, he stressed.
In his speeches, Mr Merz continues to rule out this possibility, making continued support for Ukraine a question of “European sovereignty”. In an op-ed for the FAZ newspaper, he refuses to “leave it to non-European states to decide what happens to the financial resources of an aggressor state that have been lawfully frozen” in the EU.
A reference to the United States, which is reportedly putting pressure on the Member States to direct the investments that would be made possible by a financial windfall of 200 billion euros, as part of the US peace plan between Ukraine and Russia, leaked to the press. (Original version in French by Mathieu Bion)