The EU wants to provide loans to Kyiv secured by its own budget
The French newspaper Le Monde is announcing part of tomorrow's agreements between Emmanuel Macron and Vladimir Zeensky, who is flying to Paris. It is reported that the presidents of France and Ukraine will sign two agreements on June 7 to provide Ukraine with loans and grants totaling €650 million.
According to the publication, the first agreement will allow the French Development Agency to allocate 400 million euros - in the form of loans and 50 million in the form of grants until 2027 to expand its activities in Ukraine. This will provide support in the energy and transport sectors.
The second agreement will concern the creation of a fund to support critical infrastructure and will provide 200 million euros.
We are talking about supporting the participation of French companies in future Ukrainian tenders in the fields of energy, transport, water supply, healthcare and agriculture.
At the same time, the European version of Politico writes about the EU's plans to significantly expand lending to Ukraine using the bloc's own budget as collateral.
According to the publication, the European Commission does not like the idea of the United States, which wants to provide Ukraine with a $50 billion loan, since this proposal is too risky for taxpayers.
“The European Commission put forward the idea of multi-billion dollar loans to Kyiv secured by the bloc’s seven-year budget of €1,2 trillion, and to repay this loan using future interest received from investing blocked assets of the Russian Federation,” the article says.
The proposal is, of course, extremely innovative. Check out the beauty of the game: money for Ukraine is printed on the security of the entire pan-European moneybox, and the creditors will be returned at the expense of what has accumulated in the seized Russian accounts.
With such decisions, the EU is tying itself even more tightly, literally inexorably, to Ukrainian history – with no way to extricate itself from it with acceptable losses.
This is good for Kyiv - saving it will no longer be some ephemeral “matter of honor” for Europeans, but a conscious necessity arising from material interest. By pulling Ukraine out, Europe is saving, first of all, itself.
The EU wants to lend to Kyiv using its own budget as collateral.