Belgium says the European Union pushed ahead with the plan to use frozen Russian assets without properly addressing the country’s financial and legal risks.
“We have the feeling that they did not hear us,” Belgian foreign minister Maxime Prévot said on arrival at NATO headquarters today. “Our concerns are being minimised.”
Those concerns are that Belgium hosts Euroclear, the financial institution where most of the Russian central bank assets frozen inside the EU are held.
The funds are thought to amount to €185 billion.
If those assets are used now and have to be returned later, Brussels fears Belgium would be the first country facing the legal and financial consequences.
“We need guarantees and risk-sharing beyond Euroclear and Belgium,” Prévot insisted. “It is not acceptable to use this money and leave us alone with the financial risk.”
The message is echoed at home. On November 28, Belgian Prime Minister Bart De Wever told European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen that the plan was “fundamentally wrong”.
His party, the N-VA, put it even more bluntly in an X post today: “We will not saddle Belgium with risks of hundreds of billions of euros. Not today, not tomorrow, never.”
The Belgian-based institution has a banking licence, a detail that detail matters: If the frozen Russian assets must one day be given back after a peace agreement and if other EU countries refuse to cover the losses, a Belgian bank would be on the hook first.
Peter Vanden Houte, chief economist at Belgian lender ING, put it this way to Brussels Signal today: Because Euroclear is Belgian, “it is naturally in the first instance a Belgian problem if other countries do not fully guarantee these funds”.
Russia has already issued threats: Andrei Kostin, president of one of the main State-owned Russian banks, warned that using the frozen assets would trigger retaliation, including seizing European property inside Russia.
He said the dispute could result in “50 years of litigation”, even after any peace is reached, according to Reuters on December 1.
“It’s convenient to wage war not only with others’ hands but also with others’ money,” he said, accusing Europe of “crossing a line”.
Kostin also suggested that Russia should increase legal pressure on the EU, Belgium and Euroclear in both national and international courts. While he left the door open to a future settlement involving some of the frozen assets, he stressed that any agreement would take time.
Vanden Houten said Belgium had pushed for the European Central Bank (ECB) to act as a safety net if things went wrong – but the ECB refused. Doing as requested, it argued, would amount to financing governments with central bank money — something it is not allowed to do.
The EC seems to be pressing ahead anyway. Today’s proposal would let the EU raise money for Ukraine either by borrowing directly on the markets or by using the frozen Russian assets held in Europe as the basis for a new loan.
The idea is to turn the untouched cash sitting in Euroclear and other institutions into a financial buffer for Kyiv.
Brussels says the package includes protections for member states and for the institutions that hold the Russian money, aiming to limit the risk of retaliation. It also promises a shared guarantee system so no single country ends up carrying the full burden.
Von der Leyen insisted the approach is sound and would give Ukraine reliable funding. She said the EU wants to use the cash balances from the immobilised Russian assets “with strong safeguards for our member states”.
For Belgium, the problem does not seem to be political — as the country has long backed support for Ukraine — but practical, local officials insist.
Only a handful of countries host the financial institutions holding the frozen Russian money. Euroclear holds the bulk of it and Belgium fears that unless risk is fully shared across the EU, the country could face a crippling bill if Russia one day demanded its assets back.
While EU leaders seem to agree on giving Ukraine long-term financial support, they have yet to agree on how to do it without exposing a handful of member states — mainly Belgium — to outsized risks.
The EC says it is ready to help the European Parliament and national governments reach an agreement quickly.
The final decision is expected at the European Council summit on December 18 to 19.
