Rinkēvičs met with the 'killer' of the plan to seize Russian assets? Media 0 5

French President Emmanuel Macron and Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni played a key role in abandoning the plan to use frozen Russian assets. This is reported by the Financial Times (FT) citing sources in European Union diplomatic circles. Macron and Meloni stated that it was unlikely they could meet Belgium's demands regarding the 'reparations loan' to Kyiv from Russian assets, after which the European Union abandoned the loan project. It is worth recalling that on the eve of the summit, Latvian President Edgars Rinkēvičs met with French President Emmanuel Macron.

"In the negotiations, Macron and Meloni expressed doubts about the likelihood that the parliaments of their countries would agree to the financial guarantees that Belgium required for risk-sharing in the loan repayment," the publication reports.

According to officials, the two largest heavyweights in the EU changed the atmosphere. But the main 'killer [of the plan] was Meloni,' one European diplomat stated. According to the publication, the skepticism of the leaders of the two largest EU countries regarding support for the scheme of expropriating Russian assets by their national parliaments 'changed the mood' in the negotiations.

FT notes that the complexity and obscurity of the scheme proposed by the European Commission frightened many leaders, even its supporters. One source described the plan as 'sorcery,' which had 'become too much,' rendering it unworkable. According to diplomats, the implementation of the project was impossible due to legal and technical complexities.

The EU summit decided to provide Ukraine with a zero-percent loan based on borrowing in financial markets, guaranteed by the union's budget. However, three countries — Hungary, the Czech Republic, and Slovakia — legally refused to participate in the euro-financing of Ukraine for 90 billion euros at zero percent for 2026-2027.