Bart De Wever seeks to unlock reparations loan to fund war against Russia while protecting his country from financial ruin

Bart de Wever, the Belgian PM, appears on the balcony of his office on the eve of the European Union leaders’ summit in Brussels Credit: Yves Herman/Reuters

Bill Browder. Jamison Firestone

17 December 2025 2:02pm GMT

Tomorrow, European Union leaders will meet for a crunch debate on the financing of Ukraine in 2026 and 2027. With the United States no longer contributing financially, the EU needs to find at least €90bn (£79bn) of new money. It would be very hard to get agreement on raising such a sum by conventional borrowing, so the scheme to be discussed takes a different approach.

The plan is called the “reparations loan”. It would involve assets of the Russian Central Bank, frozen in Europe since the full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022. These assets would be transferred to the European Commission (EC), which would then issue a zero-interest loan to Ukraine. This loan would not have to be repaid until the war was over and Russia had paid reparations to Ukraine. Kyiv would then use the reparations to repay the commission, and the EC would – in that scenario of Moscow having paid reparations, and that scenario only – unfreeze Russia’s assets.

The loan would not be a case of seizing the Russian assets, any more than your bank has seized your money when it uses deposited funds to make a loan to someone else. Your balance remains the same – this is how banking works.

Most of the major nations of the EU are willing to proceed with the reparations loan programme. Opposition to it has been led by Belgium, which is home to Euroclear, the financial institution which holds the Russian assets concerned. Belgium is understandably concerned that it might one day wind up on the wrong end of a lawsuit by Russia and liable to repay the entire sum on its own.

But Bart De Wever, Belgium’s prime minister, has brilliantly negotiated a package of protections for Belgium from the rest of the EU which will go into effect if the reparations loan programme is approved this week.

However, what most people don’t realise is that if the loan package isn’t approved, the legal risks will remain, but Belgium won’t get any of the protections.

The dirty secret that Russia in particular doesn’t want anyone to mention is that enacting the rest of the reparations loan programme doesn’t give Moscow any additional rights to sue, but failing to enact it leaves both Ukraine and Belgium unprotected

Yes, you heard that right. Failure to enact the loan programme will leave Belgium unprotected. Let me explain.

When you freeze someone’s money and tell them they might not get it back, that creates some legal risk right away. For a lot of reasons, those risks are small in this situation, mostly because no court with enforcement powers would hear the case.

But nonetheless, as prime minister De Wever has correctly explained, existing EU actions have created a small risk of Belgium suffering a huge financial catastrophe if Russia succeeds in suing. This is an unjust situation which must not and cannot be borne by Belgium alone.

However, what the what the public may not appreciate is that all the legal risk from the reparations loan crystallised on Friday when the EU enacted part one of the programme, freezing Russia’s money indefinitely unless it pays Ukraine reparations.

The second part of the reparations programme to be voted on now (which Russia falsely calls a seizure), adds no additional legal risks for Belgium or anyone else because legally and factually it doesn’t take any money from Russia. The rest of the plan is just an internal EU matter of trading bonds for cash with European banks and using the resulting cash to fund Ukraine.

None of us would have a right to sue if the EU did this to our banks because our bank balances would remain unchanged and our banks would still be solvent. It would change nothing for us, and it changes nothing for Russia, except Ukraine gets funded. This is why enacting the rest of the reparations loan plan doesn’t give Russia any new right to sue.

However, not enacting the plan would be devastating for Ukraine, terrible for European security, and potentially devastating for Belgium and Euroclear.

Why? Because De Wever is right. Belgium and Euroclear must be fully protected from the risks, no matter how unlikely they are, and the only way the country gets all those protections that the PM has negotiated … is to do the deal. Again, all the legal risks have been assumed: they landed on Friday when the EU crossed the Rubicon by passing the immobilisation decree and stating clearly that Russia will not get its assets back until it pays reparations to Ukraine. The actual loan adds no additional legal risk.

The absolute worst possible outcome is for the loan programme not to move ahead. Belgium will have taken on the legal risks and gained no protective backing from the rest of the EU.

Our hats are off to Mr De Wever for negotiating the protection Belgium needs and deserves. But will he overplay his hand and lose it all at the last minute – or will he strike a deal and emerge a hero to Belgium, the EU, and Ukraine?

Stay tuned.

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Sir William Browder KCMG is an American-born British financier who formerly headed the largest foreign investment fund in Russia. In 2005 he was declared a threat to Russian national security and deported to the UK

Jamison Firestone is an American attorney who co-founded the Moscow law firm Firestone Duncan in 1993. He fled Russia in August 2009 after the arrest of his employee Sergei Magnitsky, who died in prison after 11 months’ incarceration without trial