{"id":287081,"date":"2025-11-28T01:22:11","date_gmt":"2025-11-28T01:22:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/287081\/"},"modified":"2025-11-28T01:22:11","modified_gmt":"2025-11-28T01:22:11","slug":"belgiums-de-wever-dials-up-opposition-to-russian-frozen-assets-deal-politico","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/287081\/","title":{"rendered":"Belgium\u2019s De Wever dials up opposition to Russian frozen assets deal \u2013 POLITICO"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Hopes had grown in recent days that De Wever could reverse his position if the European Commission were to offer him legal guarantees in the proposal that Belgium would not be financially exposed. <\/p>\n<p>But despite increasing diplomatic pressure for Belgium to cave, De Wever on Thursday only increased his hostility to the Commission\u2019s plans. Expanding on his previous objections, the Belgian leader argued the Commission\u2019s scheme would block a peace deal in Ukraine. If the EU\u2019s plan doesn\u2019t come to fruition, the Russian assets will instead be used as a bargaining chip to bring Moscow to the negotiating table rather than being paid to Kyiv, he said.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cHastily moving forward on the proposed reparations loan scheme would have, as a collateral damage, that we as EU are effectively preventing reaching an eventual peace deal,\u201d De Wever wrote in the letter.<\/p>\n<p>After a prolonged standoff, the Commission is expected to finally put forward a formal proposal outlining the loan on Friday or early next week. <a href=\"https:\/\/www.politico.eu\/article\/ukraine-loan-plan-eu-summit-bart-de-wever-russian-assets-finance-brussels\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">After failing to reach a deal in October<\/a>, EU leaders are set to tackle the most sensitive issues in their next summit in mid-December.<\/p>\n<p>While a majority of countries back the loan, De Wever is unconvinced.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIn the very probable event Russia is ultimately not officially the losing party, it will, as history has shown in other cases, be legitimately asking for its sovereign assets to be returned,\u201d De Wever continued in the letter.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Hopes had grown in recent days that De Wever could reverse his position if the European Commission were&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":287082,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[894,105444,643,116729,460,70083,49,1293,467,50,154,51,47,52,48,157,2988,161],"class_list":{"0":"post-287081","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-headlines","8":"tag-banks","9":"tag-bart-de-wever","10":"tag-belgium","11":"tag-collateral","12":"tag-debt","13":"tag-finance-and-banking","14":"tag-headlines","15":"tag-history","16":"tag-markets","17":"tag-news","18":"tag-russia","19":"tag-top-news","20":"tag-top-stories","21":"tag-topnews","22":"tag-topstories","23":"tag-ukraine","24":"tag-ursula-von-der-leyen","25":"tag-war-in-ukraine"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/287081","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=287081"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/287081\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/287082"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=287081"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=287081"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=287081"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}