Global & US Headlines
Belgium Holds the Line on €210 B Russian-Asset Plan for Ukraine
At the 18 Dec 2025 Brussels summit, EU leaders failed to secure unanimous backing for a loan to Kyiv that would be collateralised with the bloc’s €210 billion in frozen Russian central-bank reserves because Belgium demanded open-ended guarantees against legal and retaliatory risk.
Focusing Facts
- Belgium’s Euroclear custodies about €185 billion—roughly 88 %—of the frozen Russian funds under dispute.
- The proposed ‘reparations loan’ would channel €90 billion to Ukraine for 2026-27, with repayment waived unless Russia later pays war damages.
- Hungary has pre-emptively vowed to veto any alternative joint-EU borrowing plan, making the asset-backed scheme effectively the sole viable financing option.
Context
Major powers have weaponised foreign reserves before—Britain froze Iranian sterling balances in 1952; the U.S. impounded $50 billion in Iraqi assets in 1990—but the scale here dwarfs those moves and directly challenges the post-1971 norm that sovereign reserves are sacrosanct. Europe’s dilemma exposes two structural trends: (1) the crumbling of the dollar-centric, rules-based financial order as reserves become bargaining chips, and (2) the EU’s struggle to convert its economic heft into strategic autonomy without U.S. cover. If Brussels musters the political will, it pioneers a template for financing wars and reconstruction with aggressor assets; if it fails, future reserve-holding states may accelerate diversification away from Western custodians, eroding euro and dollar dominance over the next century. Either outcome will echo for decades—much as the Dawes Plan (1924) and the seizure of Axis assets (1945) re-shaped international finance long after the cannons fell silent.
Perspectives
Mainstream pro-EU news outlets
Reuters/U.S. News & World Report, Yahoo Finance, Euronews, Anadolu — They depict the frozen-assets loan as the most realistic way to keep Ukraine solvent and to preserve Europe’s credibility, warning that failure would embolden Russia and confirm Trump’s taunts of EU “weakness”. Reporting closely tracks EU diplomats’ talking points, so legal pitfalls and dissenting member states are downplayed to sustain pressure on Belgium and project a sense of inevitable consensus.
Belgian-led risk-averse regional coverage
The Irish Times, Times of Malta, Business Standard — Articles spotlight Belgium’s demand for unlimited guarantees and argue the asset-backed scheme could expose Brussels to crippling lawsuits, erode faith in the euro and invite Russian retaliation. By foregrounding national exposure and domestic politics, these pieces may exaggerate the potential damages and use worst-case scenarios to justify stalling a decision that most EU partners consider urgent.
U.S. geopolitical commentary
GZERO Media — Frames the standoff as a decisive test of whether Europe can act independently, claiming the loan is a “perfect plan” being sabotaged by Belgian timidity and by Trump’s desire to keep the assets for his own deal with Moscow. Bremmer’s narrative fits his G-Zero worldview and highlights Trump as the chief spoiler, potentially understating internal EU divisions in order to dramatise the clash and reinforce his brand of big-picture analysis.