{"id":649596,"date":"2025-12-23T03:42:14","date_gmt":"2025-12-23T03:42:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/649596\/"},"modified":"2025-12-23T03:42:14","modified_gmt":"2025-12-23T03:42:14","slug":"europe-is-failing-ukraine-politico","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/649596\/","title":{"rendered":"Europe is failing Ukraine \u2013 POLITICO"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The felling of the \u201creparations loan\u201d proposal, which would have recycled Russian assets that are mostly frozen in a clearing bank in Belgium, deprives Ukraine of guaranteed funding for the next two years.<\/p>\n<p>It was Belgium\u2019s legal anxieties over the loan, along with French President Emmanuel Macron\u2019s and Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni\u2019s reluctance to join German Chancellor Friedrich Merz in championing the proposal, that doomed it. And all that, despite weeks of wrangling and overblown expectations by the plan\u2019s advocates, including European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen.<\/p>\n<p>Fortunately, the EU will still provide a sizable funding package for Ukraine, after <a href=\"https:\/\/www.politico.eu\/article\/european-council-summit-eu-agrees-e90b-ukraine-loan-russian-assets-plan-fails\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">agreeing to jointly borrow \u00a0\u20ac90 billion<\/a> from capital markets secured against the EU\u2019s budget, and lend it on a no-interest basis.<\/p>\n<p>But while this will prevent the country from running out of money early next year, the package is meant to be spread out over two years, and that won\u2019t be sufficient to keep Ukraine in the fight. According to projections by the International Monetary Fund, due to the reduction in U.S. financial support, Ukraine\u2019s budgetary shortfall over the next two years will be closer to $160 billion.<\/p>\n<p>Simply put, Ukraine will need much more from Europe \u2014 and that\u2019s going to be increasingly difficult for the bloc to come up with.<\/p>\n<p>Still, many European leaders were rather optimistic once the funding deal was struck last week. Finnish President Alexander Stubb noted on Sunday that <a href=\"https:\/\/x.com\/alexstubb\/status\/2002804238267600987\" target=\"_blank\">the agreed package would still be linked to the immobilized Russian assets<\/a>, as the scheme envisions that Kyiv will use them to repay the loan once the war ends. \u201cThe immobilized Russian assets will stay immobilized \u2026 and the union reserves its right to make use of the immobilized assets to repay this loan,\u201d he posted on X.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The felling of the \u201creparations loan\u201d proposal, which would have recycled Russian assets that are mostly frozen in&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":649597,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7655],"tags":[12915,17466,15856,32,34,6562,1945,2440,660,7696,809,332,7339,657,30878,771,335],"class_list":{"0":"post-649596","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-russia","8":"tag-aid-and-development","9":"tag-asset-management","10":"tag-bart-de-wever","11":"tag-donald-trump","12":"tag-emmanuel-macron","13":"tag-eu27","14":"tag-friedrich-merz","15":"tag-giorgia-meloni","16":"tag-kremlin","17":"tag-kristen-michal","18":"tag-negotiations","19":"tag-russia","20":"tag-russia-sanctions","21":"tag-ukraine","22":"tag-unpacked","23":"tag-war","24":"tag-war-in-ukraine"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115766817244033653","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/649596","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=649596"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/649596\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/649597"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=649596"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=649596"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=649596"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}