Pressure on Belgium as EU leaders race to reach funding deal for Ukraine

EU leaders have been presented with two options to meet Ukraine’s estimated €136bn funding needs in 2026 and 2027: a “reparations loan” secured against Russian frozen assets or joint EU borrowing to fund Kyiv.

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The European Commission, which proposed the €90bn loan, expects Ukraine’s other western allies to make up the rest.

Germany and other frugal countries, such as Sweden and the Netherlands, strongly support tapping Russian assets rather than European taxpayers. The German chancellor, Friedrich Merz, said the reparations loan was the only option. “We are basically faced with the choice of using European debt or Russian assets for Ukraine, and my opinion is clear: we must use the Russian assets.”

But Belgium, which hosts most of the Russian assets, said it had not received adequate guarantees from the rest of the EU for if the scheme went wrong. “Give me a parachute and we'll all jump together,” the prime minister, Bart De Wever, told Belgian MPs before the summit. “If we have confidence in the parachute that shouldn’t be a problem.

Belgium has pressed for unlimited guarantees that mean it would not be left alone to pay the bill should Russia succeed in retaliatory legal claims against Euroclear, the Brussels depository where €185bn of Russian assets are parked, or Belgian companies.