The European Union plans to allocate new loans to Ukraine worth €40 billion without the participation of the United States. At the same time, Brussels will try to circumvent Hungary’s potential veto, Hromadske reports.
The Financial Times writes about this, citing its own sources.
Such loans are planned to be disbursed by the end of this year. According to the newspaper, “Plan A” involves the United States in this process, but now the European Commission is considering an alternative if Hungary maintains its veto.
The final amount of loans will be between 20 billion and 40 billion euros. It will be set by the European Commission after consultations with EU member states.
Earlier, in June of this year, the G7 leaders agreed to provide Ukraine with a $50 billion loan to be repaid from future earnings from Russia’s frozen foreign exchange reserves of about 260 billion euros.
However, Hungary, which has previously vetoed the allocation of funds to Ukraine, is blocking this initiative. In turn, as a possible alternative, the EU is considering providing loans under its existing financial support package, which expires at the end of the year.
According to the FT, the EU’s plan will provide part of the $20 billion that was supposed to come from Washington under the original G7 proposal if the administration of US President Joe Biden fails to provide a loan so close to the election. Brussels expects that the White House will allocate the funds.
If the decision to grant the loan is made unilaterally, the EU should start working in the next few weeks to overcome all the necessary legislative obstacles in time, as the support package for Ukraine expires at the end of the year.
