Overview
- The European Commission published legal texts proposing a reparations loan for Ukraine backed by frozen Russian state assets and a parallel option of EU-level borrowing guaranteed by the EU budget.
- Commission documents reported by POLITICO outline a €165 billion reparations loan within a wider package of up to €210 billion, with €115 billion for defense industry support, €50 billion for Ukraine’s budget, and €45 billion to repay a 2024 G7/EU loan.
- Belgian Foreign Minister Maxime Prévot rejected the reparations-loan scheme as too risky without firm guarantees, citing exposure of Euroclear and Belgium to lawsuits and retaliation, and urged common EU borrowing instead.
- The Commission is offering safeguards and a legal workaround to prevent a single-state veto on sanctions renewals by invoking Article 122 to permit qualified-majority rollovers, potentially extending renewals to three years.
- Most of the roughly €210 billion in frozen Russian sovereign assets are held at Euroclear in Belgium (about €185–194 billion), with the proposal also drawing on around €25 billion held elsewhere in the EU, and bridge financing is being prepared pending a decision on December 18–19.