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Belgium’s prime minister has claimed that rapid finalisation of an EU plan to use frozen Russian state assets to fund Ukraine would wreck the chances of a potential peace deal to end the almost four-year long war.
Bart De Wever’s objections to the EU proposal, outlined in a letter to the European Commission, come three weeks before the bloc’s leaders are set to use a summit to decide how to continue funding Kyiv.
The letter, seen by the Financial Times, also coincides with US President Donald Trump’s new initiative to try to end Russia’s war in Ukraine, which has largely bypassed EU capitals.
The European Commission has proposed using Russian state assets — frozen after Moscow’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine — to finance a €140bn EU “reparations loan” to Ukraine that would keep the country solvent for the next two years.
A majority of EU countries support the loan but Belgium, where most of the assets frozen by the bloc are held, in the Brussels-based central securities depository Euroclear, has pushed back.
Belgium fears Russia could retaliate against the country, and is also concerned about the risk that it could be sued should something go wrong with the EU loan, given it is the keeper of the assets.
In his letter to European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen, De Wever said: “Hastily moving forward on the proposed reparations loan scheme would have, as a collateral damage, that we as EU are effectively preventing reaching an eventual peace deal.”
The EU has frozen Russian state assets worth about €210bn since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, of which about €185bn are held at Euroclear.
As a precondition to supporting the EU plan, De Wever demanded that member states provide Euroclear with binding commitments to cover the €185bn held at the depository, should the loan go sour or sanctions against the Russian assets be lifted.
He said EU countries must sign up to “legally binding, unconditional, irrevocable, on-demand, joint and several guarantees” in relation to the €185bn by the time of the leaders summit in Brussels in December.
De Wever also requested that other EU countries agree to share the financial burden of any legal proceedings arising from the loan.
And he demanded frozen Russian assets held in other EU countries be used for the loan.
His letter, which describes the EU loan proposal as “fundamentally wrong”, echoes arguments made by Euroclear in a separate letter to von der Leyen.
Both argue that EU governments would face higher debt costs as a result of the loan, that it would be perceived as “confiscation” outside the bloc while also spooking investors in European sovereign debt.
Instead, De Wever, a right-wing Flemish politician, proposed that the EU use untapped borrowing powers under its shared budget to provide €45bn to Ukraine, which would cover its financial needs for 2026, as estimated by the commission.
“Such an option would, as a matter of fact, come cheaper than other options, in particular the option of reparations loan, if all risks are factored in,” he wrote in his letter.
He added: “When we talk about having skin in the game, we have to accept that it will be our skin in the game. Talk is cheap but helping Ukraine will unfortunately be expensive.”
Von der Leyen said on Wednesday that the commission “is ready to present a legal text” for the EU loan plan soon.
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