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German Chancellor Friedrich Merz is making a last-ditch bid to secure crucial Belgian support for an EU plan to use frozen Russian sovereign assets to fund European military aid to Ukraine.
Merz will travel to Brussels on Friday to dine with Belgian Prime Minister Bart De Wever, who has become the biggest obstacle to a so-called reparations loan for Kyiv backed by the assets. European officials are rushing to get backing for the plan before leaders debate the proposal at a summit in two weeks.
“It is a race against the clock,” said a German government insider. Another added: “Merz thinks it is on his shoulders to carry this over the line.”
The meeting comes days after European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen unveiled legal proposals for the loan, which controversially rely on emergency powers in EU treaties to keep Russian assets frozen indefinitely, and push the loan through while bypassing potential national vetoes.
Merz supports the proposal and use of the Article 122 emergency powers, even if Belgium remains opposed, according to people familiar with his position. A spokesman for the German government declined to comment on the message Merz intends to deliver to de Wever.
In order to attend, the German leader rescheduled his first state visit to Norway, where he had been due to meet the King as well as Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Støre. Von der Leyen will also take part in the Brussels dinner.
Writing in the Financial Times in September, the German chancellor endorsed leveraging about €210bn of Russian central bank assets immobilised in Europe for Ukraine. That marked a reversal from earlier scepticism, driven partly by fears it could undermine confidence in the euro, according to people with knowledge of his thinking.
“He is taking a high risk and throwing his whole weight behind it,” said Carlo Masala, professor of international relations at the Bundeswehr University Munich. “It shows how serious he is about the issue.”
Belgium and Brussels-based Euroclear, a clearing house which holds most of the assets, have threatened to block the plan without “cast-iron” guarantees that the other EU countries would also bear the brunt of any financial burden or retaliation from Moscow.
Several countries, including France, have balked at issuing national guarantees for the loan, needed in case Euroclear is required to return the assets to Moscow. The European Central Bank has declined to provide emergency liquidity to Euroclear should those guarantees be triggered.
Recent talks over a deal to end Moscow’s war on Ukraine have injected fresh urgency into the debate. Merz and other European leaders, who were excluded from the US-Russia negotiations, were alarmed to discover that the discussions touched directly on the Russian sovereign assets held in Europe, according to several people close to the chancellery.
Norbert Röttgen, a senior MP from Merz’s CDU party, described the decision on Russian assets as “Europe’s moment of truth”. He added: “If we can’t do this [the reparations loan], then what does it say about Europe’s sovereignty and all that talk about strategic autonomy?”
For Berlin, the need to secure the assets quickly and send a political signal to Moscow and Washington now outweigh legal caution, the people said. While Berlin has urged the commission to address Belgium’s concerns, it believes that there is no alternative to the loan to keep Ukraine solvent.
Germany’s push is also partly driven by concerns that the country, which has relaxed its debt brake to allow virtually unlimited spending on defence, risks having to shoulder most of the cost of supplying Ukraine with military equipment.
“We will end up paying the bill,” one of the people said.