“The EU official said that the European Commission document with options for action is not yet ready, but there are only two realistic ways to secure 130-140 billion euros”, — write: www.radiosvoboda.org
EU finance ministers are meeting in Brussels after the bloc’s leaders pledged on October 23 to cover Ukraine’s needs for 2026-2027 and asked the European Commission to prepare options on how to do so.
An EU official close to the talks said the Commission’s options document was not yet ready, but there were only two realistic ways to secure the 130-140 billion euros ($152-163 billion) that Ukraine is likely to need.
Read also: 176 billion euros from frozen assets: how Brussels wants to help Ukraine without US money
One of them is to use frozen Russian assets, as proposed by the European Commission. Russia said last month that any such move would be illegal and threatened a “painful response.”
Another option is for EU governments to borrow funds from the market, but this will involve paying interest.
Most of the Russian assets frozen in Europe are in the accounts of the Belgian securities depository Euroclear. Since the invasion in February 2022, almost all securities have matured and become cash.
The option involving frozen assets would mean that the EU would replace Russian cash in Euroclear accounts with zero-coupon AAA bonds issued by the European Commission.
The cash would then flow to Kyiv, which would repay the loan only if it eventually received war reparations from Russia, effectively making the loan a grant and making Russian reparations available until the end of the war. This option is called a reparation loan, as it will be linked to the payment of reparations by Russia.
After the summit of EU leaders in Brussels, the president of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, confirmed that the main financing option for Ukraine for 2026-2027 remains a reparation loan based on frozen Russian assets.