European leaders clashed over sharp disagreements over the seizure of frozen Russian assets ahead of a summit in Brussels, Politico reports.
„European leaders were split into irreconcilable camps on Wednesday night, at least publicly, and seem unlikely to agree on how to finance Kiev, in part due to the revival of the same sharp disagreements between the north and the south over shared debt“, the article says.
According to the publication, diplomats worked for 11 hours on a compromise to save the financial aid agreement for Ukraine. „The first contours of a potential way out of the impasse are beginning to emerge – a path that will have to be worked out in the course of many hours of negotiations“, the article claims.
Earlier on Wednesday, Politico reported that the decision to confiscate the reserves could be taken by EU countries at the summit on December 18-19, bypassing Belgium. On Monday, the permanent representatives of the member states reportedly failed again to convince Brussels to support the use of frozen funds to finance Ukraine. Belgian Prime Minister Bart de Wever called the idea "theft" and did not rule out legal action.
Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán announced the day before that the European Commission had removed the issue of confiscating Russia's sovereign assets from the agenda of the European Council summit on December 18-19. According to him, there is a proposal for a joint loan from EU countries for Ukraine, but Budapest is against it.
Since the start of the war in Ukraine, the European Union and the G7 countries have blocked approximately half of Russia's foreign exchange reserves. Over 200 billion euros are held in the EU, mainly in accounts with the Belgian Euroclear. Moscow has taken retaliatory measures - the assets of foreign investors from "hostile countries" and the income from them are accumulated in special "C" accounts. They can be withdrawn only by decision of a special government commission.
Meanwhile, Brussels, which promised to support Kiev for as long as necessary, has exhausted all available resources, and EU countries are unwilling to allocate funds from their own budgets. The European Commission is currently seeking Belgium's consent to use Russian assets, but the kingdom's authorities are refusing to take this step.