The EU must keep financing Ukraine\u2019s fight unless it\u2019s prepared for Russian President Vladimir Putin to emerge victorious from the four-year war. But back-to-back crises have had a bruising effect on the public purse, further exasperated by economic fallout from the conflict in Iran.<\/p>\n
The EU could keep issuing joint-debt to support Ukraine, or leaders could return to the Russian assets debate, which has raged since Putin invaded Ukraine in Feb. 2022. The Dutch and Northern European countries would prefer the latter, especially as the Commission never withdrew its original proposal<\/a> to leverage the Russian assets.<\/p>\n \u201cWe don\u2019t comment on things that were said in a private setting,\u201d a spokesperson for the Dutch government said. \u201cThe European Council agreed last December that the Union has committed to immobilize the assets until reparations are received by Ukraine and reserves its right to make sure of the assets to repay the loan, in full accordance with EU and international law. Our position remains in line with this agreement.\u201d<\/p>\n Hopeful estimates<\/p>\n Kyiv\u2019s budget shortfall was forecast to be around \u20ac71 billion this year and \u20ac64 billion in 2027. That estimate, however, assumes that the war will end this year, a prospect that few believe will materialize.<\/p>\n Diplomats are waiting to see whether the International Monetary Fund will provide fresh estimates on Ukraine\u2019s financial health once its staffers return from their latest mission to Kyiv in June, as part of the Fund\u2019s own loan agreement with Kyiv<\/a>.<\/p>\n Until then, Commission officials are focusing their efforts on agreeing on a \u201cmemorandum of understanding\u201d with Kyiv on how to spend the \u20ac90 billion loan this year and next. The first tranche from this year\u2019s \u20ac45 billion lump sum is due in June<\/a> after Hungary withdrew its veto over the loan<\/a>, following P\u00e9ter Magyar\u2019s victory over Viktor Orb\u00e1n in the country\u2019s national elections last month.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The EU must keep financing Ukraine\u2019s fight unless it\u2019s prepared for Russian President Vladimir Putin to emerge victorious…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":9631,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[8029,4509,8030,1256,274,8031,8032,8033,8034,8035,2576,390,1057,8036,8037,1210,6,5044,8038,810,216,1331,2236,739,2033,7649,2915],"class_list":{"0":"post-9630","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-netherlands","8":"tag-asset-management","9":"tag-banks","10":"tag-bart-de-wever","11":"tag-canada","12":"tag-donald-trump","13":"tag-economic-governance","14":"tag-economic-sanctions","15":"tag-european-monetary-union","16":"tag-eurozone","17":"tag-finance-and-banking","18":"tag-finland","19":"tag-investment","20":"tag-japan","21":"tag-latvia","22":"tag-lithuania","23":"tag-markets","24":"tag-netherlands","25":"tag-russia","26":"tag-russia-sanctions","27":"tag-sanctions","28":"tag-the-netherlands","29":"tag-ukraine","30":"tag-united-kingdom","31":"tag-united-states","32":"tag-vladimir-putin","33":"tag-war-in-iran","34":"tag-war-in-ukraine"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/netherlands\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9630","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/netherlands\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/netherlands\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/netherlands\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/netherlands\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9630"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/netherlands\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9630\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/netherlands\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/9631"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/netherlands\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9630"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/netherlands\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9630"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/netherlands\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9630"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}