The story so far: In late August, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy warned allies of a roughly €27-billion hole in his country’s defence budget for the year. On October 1, after weeks of technical talks with Kyiv, the European Commission declared that Ukraine’s financial and military needs for 2026 were now “fully covered. Yet the manner of that reassurance has exposed a widening gap between Europe’s commitment to Ukraine and its comfort with how Ukrainian money is spent.
Brussels declined to front-load those payouts. There is near-unanimous agreement among member states that Ukraine cannot be allowed to collapse financially, a position backed firmly by German Chancellor Friedrich Merz, French President Emmanuel Macron and the front line EU members of the north and east. Crucially, every disbursement is tied to the Ukraine Plan, a roadmap of reforms weighted heavily toward the rule of law and anti-corruption. In practice the conditionality has proved elastic.
Kyiv wanted the gap filled quickly, and asked the European Union (EU) to accelerate disbursements already promised under existing €90-billion instruments. In a letter in early October, European Commissioners Valdis Dombrovskis and Marta Kos informed the Speaker of Ukraine’s Parliament that early disbursement had been refused, and the 2026 gap was instead closed through re-allocation and coordinated contributions, with fresh conditions attached. After a brief Hungarian veto of the bloc’s €90-billion loan package, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen insisted in Kyiv in February that “we will deliver on the loan one way or the other. In May, the European Council released close to €2.8 billion on the Facility’s seventh tranche after Kyiv had completed only 11 of 20 required reform steps, with roughly 15 overdue indicators according to the Kyiv Post.
A reparations loan could in principle be adopted by qualified majority, requiring 15 of the 27 member states representing 65% of the EU’s population, and so could not be blocked by Belgium alone. Yet Belgian Prime Minister Bart De Wever has demanded open-ended guarantees covering any damages beyond the frozen sum should Russia prevail in court, and no member state can legally commit to unlimited liability; other capitals have been reluctant to force a vote that would leave Belgium bearing a risk it alone considers unmanageable.
