After 16 hours of negotiations, EU leaders agreed a €90bn (£79bn) loan for Ukraine early Friday, averting a potential financial crisis for Kyiv, which risked running out of money by April. The deal marks a departure from the original plan to secure the loan against frozen Russian assets, instead using unallocated EU budget funds as collateral.
The alternative plan, championed by Italy’s Giorgia Meloni and France’s Emmanuel Macron, won out after Belgian Prime Minister Bart De Wever blocked the initial proposal. De Wever argued that using frozen Russian assets would invite retaliation, including potential seizure of Belgian assets in Russian-friendly jurisdictions such as China. He demanded unlimited financial guarantees from all EU members, a condition deemed unacceptable.
The agreement required exemptions for Hungary, Slovakia and the Czech Republic, whose Eurosceptic leaders secured that their taxpayers would not contribute directly to Ukraine’s defence. This marks the first time EU debt has been approved without unanimity, a step analysts call unprecedented and potentially far-reaching for the bloc’s foreign policy capacity.
While the deal is a political loss for European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen and German Chancellor Friedrich Merz, who had backed the Russian assets plan, it was hailed as a “huge deal for the EU” by Guntram Wolff of the Bruegel think tank. Ukraine will receive the funds sooner than under the original proposal, providing essential support for its war effort.
The summit exposed deep divisions within the EU but ultimately delivered a solution described as “rational” by De Wever. The move to allow willing states to proceed with collective borrowing without full consensus could set a precedent for future EU foreign policy initiatives.
