The EU is putting fresh pressure on Belgium to back its proposal to channel profits from frozen Russian assets into Ukraine’s recovery, amid a flurry of US-led peace plans, and European counter-proposals that Brussels hopes will be taken into consideration.
The push comes after days of frantic diplomacy between European and Ukrainian officials to water down the most pro-Moscow elements of the 28-point joint US-Russian peace plan, and with fewer than four days before US President Donald Trump’s deadline for Volodymyr Zelenskyy to accept the deal.
The publication of a 28-point Russian-American peace proposal last week and the US deadline have made the EU’s plan to fashion a €140 billion loan from Russian seized assets “even more urgent”, European Commission chief spokesperson Paul Pinho said on Monday.
Belgian Prime Minister Bart De Wever is still holding out against the plan, warning it could have disastrous legal and financial consequences for Belgium, given that the sovereign Russian assets that would be used for the loan are held in Euroclear, which is based in Brussels.
“Our concerns and position remain unchanged,” a Belgian official told Euractiv. “In any case, it is clear that those assets will play an important role in a peace plan. This means that, in such a scenario, the money held at Euroclear must be available/covered,” the official wrote.
Ukraine is facing a $65 billion budget gap across 2026 and 2027, and the Commission hopes to plug that gap using Russian assets, rather than coughing up cash at a time of stretched national budgets.
At a meeting to discuss the US-backed peace plan in Angola, Central Africa, chaired by European Council President António Costa on Monday, a majority of EU leaders brought up the issue of frozen Russian assets located in Belgium, an EU official said.
The countries that raised the urgency of using the assets included Denmark, Germany, Ireland, Poland, the Netherlands, and Italy, the official said. All these countries also expressed their intention not to leave Belgium alone in shouldering the responsibility for the use of the assets, according to the official.
During the last meeting of EU leaders in Brussels, the plan was also strongly backed by France and the Baltic States.
‘I’m not a bad boy’: Belgium’s De Wever defends Ukraine loan veto
Belgian Prime Minister Bart De Wever has fiercely defended his country’s refusal to back a…
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“There is a new momentum in peace negotiations,” Costa said on Monday.
But now there are no signs that Belgium is willing to budge, perhaps even less so given that the prospect of the war ending – and of Russia coming to ask for its money – is apparently closer than it was when the Commission floated the proposal a month ago.
Both Ukrainian and US negotiators have said that “meaningful progress” was made toward a peace deal following talks in Geneva over the weekend, and that “an updated and refined peace framework” has been drafted by both sides, without providing further details.
What should happen with Russia’s assets is one of the major points of disagreement between Europe and the US.
The US-backed plan would use $100 billion of immobilised Russian assets to fund Washington-led “efforts to rebuild and invest in Ukraine”. The US would receive half of all future profits, and Europe would also contribute an additional $100 billion to finance Ukraine’s reconstruction.
The EU holds the vast majority of the $300 billion in Russian sovereign assets that were frozen shortly after Russia’s full-scale invasion in 2022. America, by contrast, holds just $5 billion, meaning that the US-backed peace plan would effectively require Washington’s appropriation of Russian funds held in Europe.
Meanwhile, the alternative plan drafted by Britain, France, and Germany over the weekend makes no mention of the US profiting from the frozen assets.
Instead, it affirms that Kyiv “will be fully reconstructed and compensated financially, including through Russian sovereign assets that will remain frozen until Russia compensates damage to Ukraine”.
The three European countries leading the group of staunch Ukraine supporters, known as the Coalition of the Willing, will meet online on Tuesday.
EU foreign ministers are also planning an extraordinary meeting on Wednesday, a day before the deadline Trump set for Zelenskyy to accept the deal.
Sarantis Michalopoulos contributed reporting.
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