EU Commission announces loan for Ukraine

The European Commission is planning a 35 billion euro loan for Ukraine which is offset against interest income from frozen Russian state assets should be secured. The EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen on Friday in Kyiv an.

The money is the European share of the G7 countries planned loan of 50 billion dollars (about 44.82 billion euros) for Ukraine.

The seven major western industrial nations (G7) agreed on new financial aid for Kiev at their summit in June. Originally, the EU and the USA were to support the G7 loan with 20 billion dollars each. The Financial Times wrote on Friday, citing three unnamed sources, that the EU’s share would also be reduced if the USA participated in the aid at a later date.

The USA is demanding that the sanctions regime in the EU be changed first. Currently, the freezing of Russian funds must be confirmed every six months – although the United States is likely to fear that Russia-friendly Hungary could block this. In that case, the funds would be released again, which would also mean the money used to secure the loan would be gone. As the Reuters news agency recently wrote, a solution is being worked on in the background in Brussels.

As the EU Commission explained in a press release, the loan still has to be approved by the EU Parliament and a qualified majority of EU member states.