BRUSSELS
\nBelgium\u2019s Prime Minister Bart De Wever has called an EU plan to use frozen Russian assets to fund Ukraine \u201cfundamentally wrong,\u201d throwing further doubt on a push by Brussels to agree the move next month.
\nIn a letter to European Commission head Ursula von der Leyen seen by AFP Friday, De Wever pushed back strongly on the initiative and urged Brussels against venturing \u201cinto unchartered legal and financial waters.\u201d
\nThe EU executive, and multiple member states, are pressing for the bloc to tap immobilized Russian central bank assets to provide Kyiv with a 140-billion-euro ($162 billion) loan to plug looming budget black holes.
\nBelgium is the key voice on the issue as it hosts international deposit organization Euroclear, where the vast bulk of the assets are held.
\nDe Wever has repeatedly said the plan could leave his country facing crippling legal and financial reprisals from Moscow \u2014 and called for cast-iron guarantees from other EU countries that they will share the risk.
\n\u201cI will never commit Belgium to sustain on its own the risks and exposures,\u201d he wrote in the four-page letter.
\nHe said he would only agree to the scheme at a crunch EU leaders\u2019 summit on December 18 if binding guarantees \u201care delivered and signed by member states at the time of decision.\u201d
\nDe Wever\u2019s letter comes as von der Leyen has promised to come up with legal texts soon laying out the exact proposed structure of the scheme.
\nEU officials have asserted that the risks for Belgium of a successful legal challenge are small \u2014 an argument rebutted by the straight-talking De Wever.
\n\u201cLet me use the analogy of a plane crash: aircraft are the safest way of transportation and the chances of a crash are low, but in the event of a crash the consequences are disastrous,\u201d he said.
\nClamour to harness the Russian assets has grown in the EU after a US plan to stop the war in Ukraine that emerged last week suggested the assets should be unfrozen.
\nProponents argue that if the bloc does not act now to use the money, then it risks losing control of it under a potential US-backed peace deal.
\nThe proposed EU \u201creparations loan\u201d envisages that Ukraine would only pay back the funds once Russia has coughed up for the damages inflicted by its invasion.
\nIn the face of Belgian opposition to the plan, von der Leyen has laid out other options to keep financing Kyiv, including EU countries taking out joint borrowing.
\nThe commission has warned that those options would prove more costly for member states at a time when many are struggling with stretched national budgets.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
BRUSSELS Belgium\u2019s Prime Minister Bart De Wever has called an EU plan to use frozen Russian assets to fund Ukraine \u201cfundamentally wrong,\u201d throwing further doubt on a push by Brussels to agree the move next month. In a letter to European Commission head Ursula von der Leyen seen by AFP Friday, De Wever pushed back […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":517353,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-517326","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-world"},"yoast_head":"\n