Czech Prime Minister Andrej Babis said he opposed earmarking tens of billions of additional euros of borrowed EU money for Ukraine in the bloc's next seven-year budget, exposing cracks behind the show of unity at the October 15-16 Brussels summit, the Kyiv Independent reported.
"I don't like that there are 100 billion euros from the European budget for Ukraine, that this money should be borrowed," Babis told reporters. "It should not be in the multi-year financial framework, where member states don't have enough money," he said, adding: "In any case, Czechia will not guarantee for it."
The Commission's original €100bn ($112bn) for Ukraine as part of the EU’s Multiannual Financial Framework (MFF) seven-year 2028-2034 budget, which has already been cut to €89bn ($100bn) in compromise drafts, the latest published on October 10.
Ukraine support had looked like the one thing leaders agreed on in a budget fight that ended without a deal. Babis's objection, together with Belgium's refusal to discuss using Russia's frozen central bank assets, shows how hard it will be to pay for Kyiv's war after all US help has stopped. Under teh Biden administration the US contributed at least 40% of the funding Ukraine needed, much of it as grants that don't have to be repaid. The EU's seven-year budget needs unanimity, and leaders hope to settle it before the end of the year.
Babis also turned on US President Donald Trump, whom he has long courted. "Trump effectively betrayed us by concluding the business deal with Putin, and we have to do something," he said, echoing Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy's criticism of Trump's diesel deal with Moscow. He said a day earlier that Europe was "completely out" of peace talks and needed to agree a common approach.
Belgium pushes back again on frozen funds
Belgian Prime Minister Bart De Wever, whose country holds most of the frozen Russian money at Euroclear, refused to reopen the question of using it before the war ends, European Pravda reported.
As an increasingly dysfunctional Europe slides into a funding crisis, the frozen Russian assets increasingly look like the only option to continue to pay for Ukraine’s war, which Zelenskiy said will cost €155bn next year. However, the institutional resistance to confiscating that money remains strong as under EU law it is legally very problematic. Belgium has been particularly vocal in blocking the move when it was first discussed last December as part of the Reparation Loan idea.
Asked whether some leaders wanted to use the assets sooner, De Wever said: "Are there people on this planet who maybe dream of doing it differently this time and operationalising those assets earlier for certain purposes? The answer to that question is yes, there are. Are they in this building? They are. Are they outside this building? Yes, they are. Do I want to talk about it? No, I don't." Any decision on the assets requires unanimity. Germany's Friedrich Merz has also rejected a US proposal to move part of them into a vehicle overseen by Washington as was suggested by the US envoys in a meeting in Miami last week.
Moldova, Ukraine EU accession parallel tracks
Zelenskiy, meanwhile, asked leaders to keep Moldova's EU membership bid tied to Ukraine's, even though Chisinau is moving faster. Both Moldova and Ukraine opened two more EU accession clusters this month.
"When Ukraine and Moldova are moving so closely together - that's great - when we are doing so much to support Moldova and create the conditions it needs, it would be simply wrong to split us apart on our way into the EU. I hope not. Morally wrong," he told them. He argued that Ukraine protects Moldova from Russian meddling through Transnistria, work that means pulling some forces from other tasks.
The two bids have been linked by an informal political decision that was expected to lapse once both countries open all six negotiating clusters.
"Moldova is adopting EU laws faster than any country since Hungary in 2002," a senior EU official told the Kyiv Independent, and French President Emmanuel Macron said accession should move "based on each country's own merits".
The summit conclusions said each candidate advances "on the basis of its individual progress", wording that points towards separating the two bids. Hungary and Bulgaria had already watered down the summit's language on Ukraine's EU accession bid. Ukraine and Moldova both hope to open their last two clusters before the end of the year.