A week after Belgian Prime Minister Bart De Wever torpedoed EU plans to tap €140 billion in frozen Russian assets for Ukraine, Brussels is scrambling to craft a new lifeline.
EU leaders had arrived at last week’s European Council summit expecting to seal a deal to redirect profits from Russia’s immobilised state holdings into Ukraine’s war chest. Instead, De Wever’s resistance — driven less by sympathy for Moscow than by fears of lawsuits and Kremlin retaliation — left the Council punting the issue until December.
Now the Europen Commission is racing to find a way forward: either soothe Belgian concerns enough to unlock the Russian money or revive the politically toxic idea of joint EU borrowing. Both carry heavy financial and political stakes, and time is short. With Ukraine needing roughly €85 billion a year and EU budget support set to run out in early 2026.
Plan A: Use frozen Russian assets — but Belgium bucks
After the European Council meeting, De Wever explained that too few member states had agreed to back a liquidity safety net to guarantee the value of the Russian assets, leaving Belgium holding the bag if Russian claims in court succeeded or if the assets had to be returned under a peace deal.
When he asked for support from other member states, De Wever recalled, “This question was not answered with a tsunami of enthusiasm around the table,” adding that “few” but “not zero,” countries were willing to join a liquidity safety net. While calling the proposal “a Robin Hood story, for public opinion, it’s a bestseller — take Putin's money and use it to fund Ukraine,” he warned Belgium was not willing to carry the risk alone.
According to Alexander Kolyandr, a senior fellow at the Center for European Policy Analysis and an expert on the Russian economy, De Wever’s caution is well-founded. If Belgium moved ahead on its own, he said, the small European country could be subject to extensive litigation from pro-Kremlin entities within the EU.
Moscow could also retaliate against Euroclear, the Brussels-based financial firm that holds the Russian state assets but also maintains accounts in Russia. If Russia seized Euroclear’s money, the Belgium government might be forced to cover the losses.
“Belgium doesn't want to face all that alone,” Kolyandr told The Parliament. “They want legal and financial responsibility distributed among the European countries or the countries that participate in this asset seizure. It’s quite understandable.”
Belgium is also mired in a budget impasse that poses a risk to De Wever’s fragile coalition. If no agreement is reached by November 6, he’s threatened to resign — making the Commission’s push to use the Russian assets especially ill-timed.
With so many fires to put out at home, De Wever and his team may not have given the Russian asset issue much attention, said Caroline Sägesser, a professor at CRiSP and expert on Belgian politics. That may have led other leaders to misread Belgium’s position.
“[Charles Michel and Alexander De Croo] would have paid much more attention to what was happening at the European level, if they were in his position,” Sägesser told The Parliament, referring to Belgium’s former leaders. “Bart De Wever has no international ambition. He’s a Flemish nationalist, he was the mayor of Antwerp and will probably return there afterward.”
But while some opposition figures have called De Wever “the new Orban,” his coalition partners have largely backed him, reflecting a broader Belgian concern over the possible risk of touching the money.
“While the intention to use Russian assets in the best possible way to support Ukraine is fully understandable in the context of the ongoing war, this must be done with the utmost caution,” Sophie Wilmès, the prime minister of Belgium between 2019 and 2020, and a vice president in the European Parliament, told The Parliament. “Prime Minister De Wever is right to call for such caution and to advocate working towards a viable solution.”
Plan B: Joint EU borrowing — more leverage than likelihood
In the wake of De Wever’s veto, the Commission has begun revisiting an old tool: joint European borrowing, or Eurobonds. Used during the COVID-19 crisis to prop up ailing European economies, the plan would involve countries taking on joint debt across the bloc to fund Ukraine.
On paper, the math looks manageable. According to Ash, Ukraine needs €85 billion from the EU each year to fund its defence, amounting to just 0.5% of the EU’s €17.9 trillion GDP — roughly 1.2% of member states’ total tax revenue.
That figure is small compared to what Europe would need to spend on defence if Ukraine loses the war, Timothy Ash, an associate fellow at Chatham House, told The Parliament.
But politically, the idea is toxic. With national budgets already strained by American demands to drastically increase defence spending, the prospect of using taxpayer money to fund Ukraine faces stiff resistance.
“It does not sound like a lot but the reality is many European countries face budget crises,” said Ash. “Populations are saying their governments need to spend the money at home on pensions, health care. And not prioritising these budget line items risks playing to the agenda of the far right in Europe — which will be exploited by Putin.”
Even though Belgium is saddled with one of the highest debt burdens in Europe, De Wever was open to joint borrowing, telling reporters that “The big advantage of debt is that you know it. You know how much it is, you know how long you will bear it, you know exactly who's responsible for it. The disadvantage of the Russian money is that you have no idea how far the litigation will go, how long it will take, and what you will encounter in problems.”
Still, Eurobonds would require unanimous approval — a near impossibility with Hungary’s Viktor Orban ready to veto.
In reality, the Commission’s talk of joint borrowing is likely a bargaining chip to push other European countries back towards Plan A — finding a way to reassure Belgium that it won’t be stuck alone with the risk of using Russian assets.
“To make European bonds investable, Europe would need to introduce a guarantee which is more or less budgetary spending,” said Kolyandr. “My money is on them finding some kind of reassurance for Belgium and using the Russian money.”
But Europe’s window for decisive action is closing fast. Not only is Ukraine running out of money as the Americans refuse to open their wallets, but the steady rise of Euroskeptic and pro-Russia parties across the continent will make reaching a consensus on funding increasingly fraught. That means for Europe and its plan to use Russia’s own money against itself, the choice is becoming stark: it’s now or never.
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