EU leaders agree to work on using Russian assets for loan for Ukraine -Polish PM
· The Straits TimesBRUSSELS, Dec 18 - EU leaders agreed at a summit in Brussels on Thursday to work on the option of financing Ukraine in 2026 band 2027 through the use of frozen Russian assets rather than joint EU borrowing, Poland's Prime Minister Donald Tusk said.
"We are certainly after a breakthrough and the breakthrough means that everybody agrees that it is worth trying and that the use of Russian assets for Ukraine would be justified and good for Europe, but some countries will fight until the end to maximise guarantees for themselves," Tusk told reporters.
"This declaration that we all want to use Russian assets for Ukraine was made and I don't think anybody is going to go back on it," Tusk said during a break in summit talks.
Of the total 210 billion euros of Russian assets frozen in the EU after Moscow's invasion of Ukraine in 2022, 185 billion are held in Belgium's Euroclear central securities depository and Belgium is worried it would be the target of Russian legal retaliation if it agrees to release the funds for the EU plan.
"We have many ours of increasingly technical discussions ahead of us, because the countries which are the most at risk of Russian financial reprisals in the future, mainly Belgium, but not only, are looking for safeguards," Tusk said.
"The use of the so-called headroom in the EU budget does not inspire enthusiasm in key EU countries, so I would not see hope for plans to use European money for this. We will rather be looking at the reparations loan on the basis of Russian assets and we will rather be looking to provide guarantees for countries most at risk, like Belgium, so that they fell these guarantees are serious," he said. REUTERS