{"id":532522,"date":"2025-10-28T04:36:18","date_gmt":"2025-10-28T04:36:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/532522\/"},"modified":"2025-10-28T04:36:18","modified_gmt":"2025-10-28T04:36:18","slug":"if-you-wont-seize-russias-cash-open-your-wallets-politico","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/532522\/","title":{"rendered":"If you won\u2019t seize Russia\u2019s cash, open your wallets \u2013 POLITICO"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>&#8220;The lack of fiscal discipline [in some EU countries] is so high that I don\u2019t believe that eurobonds will be accepted, certainly by the frugals over the next 10 years,&#8221; said Karel Lannoo, chief executive of the influential Centre for European Policy Studies, a Brussels think tank. That&#8217;s why using the frozen Russian assets looks like the only game in town. &#8220;\u20ac140 billion is a ton of money and we have to use it. We have to show that we\u2019re not afraid.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>European governments and the European Central Bank have slowly come round to using seized Russian assets to fund the \u20ac140 billion. Initially they were wary, considering snatching another country&#8217;s cash \u2015 no matter how badly that country had acted \u2015 legally and morally dubious. But Ukraine&#8217;s pressing needs, and Washington&#8217;s uncertain approach, has focused minds. <\/p>\n<p>At last week\u2019s summit of EU leaders, however, Belgium\u2019s Bart De Wever <a href=\"https:\/\/www.politico.eu\/article\/ukraine-loan-plan-eu-summit-bart-de-wever-russian-assets-finance-brussels\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">refused to budge<\/a> on the plan, which needs the backing of all 27 governments, forcing the bloc to postpone its approval until December at the earliest.<\/p>\n<p>&#8216;This is diplomacy&#8217;<\/p>\n<p>Now the EU is in a race against time on two fronts. First, Ukraine is set to run out of money by the end of March. And second, decision-making of any kind could be about to become far tougher <a href=\"https:\/\/www.politico.eu\/article\/hungary-anti-ukraine-bloc-czechia-slovakia-viktor-orban-andrej-babis-robert-fico\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">as Hungary looks to join forces with Czechia and Slovakia<\/a> to form a Ukraine-skeptic alliance. There&#8217;s a sense that it&#8217;s now or never.<\/p>\n<p>That means Commission officials are engaged in a delicate balancing act to get the assets plan across the line, three EU diplomats said. <\/p>\n<p>\u201cThis is diplomacy,\u201d said one of the diplomats with knowledge of the choreography, granted anonymity to speak freely about the plans. \u201cYou offer people something they don\u2019t want to do, so they accept the lesser option.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>A second diplomat familiar with the situation was equally dismissive of plan B. &#8220;The idea that eurobonds could seriously be on the table is simply laughable,\u201d they said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"&#8220;The lack of fiscal discipline [in some EU countries] is so high that I don\u2019t believe that eurobonds&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":532523,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5174],"tags":[331,15856,1789,1194,2825,5293,33108,2000,85516,46647,299,5187,155245,1699,18421,36,1945,1824,1197,2199,660,1114,2441,2597,6658,152305,332,7339,3053,657,771],"class_list":{"0":"post-532522","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-eu","8":"tag-banks","9":"tag-bart-de-wever","10":"tag-belgium","11":"tag-budget","12":"tag-debt","13":"tag-diplomacy","14":"tag-economic-governance","15":"tag-eu","16":"tag-eu-summit","17":"tag-eu-russia-relations","18":"tag-europe","19":"tag-european","20":"tag-european-monetary-union","21":"tag-european-union","22":"tag-finance-and-banking","23":"tag-france","24":"tag-friedrich-merz","25":"tag-germany","26":"tag-investment","27":"tag-italy","28":"tag-kremlin","29":"tag-lithuania","30":"tag-markets","31":"tag-military","32":"tag-refugees","33":"tag-risk-and-compliance","34":"tag-russia","35":"tag-russia-sanctions","36":"tag-the-netherlands","37":"tag-ukraine","38":"tag-war"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115449940299778456","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/532522","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=532522"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/532522\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/532523"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=532522"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=532522"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=532522"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}