Hungary, Malta and Luxembourg disagreed on 13 March with European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen’s proposal to use profits from frozen Russian assets to aid Ukraine.
On Wednesday, EU leaders backed the establishment of a 5-billion euro fund to finance new arms deliveries to Ukraine, but most of the contributions to the Ukraine Assistance Fund would not be coming in the form of new money.
EU countries can count their bilateral arms transfers as “contributions” to the fund, with Germany already announcing it will not pay the €1.2 billion, counting its own arms transfers as a contribution instead.
The rejection of von der Leyen’s plan came amid rumours that the frozen assets proposal would be presented closer to next week’s summit of EU leaders.
Three EU countries expressed doubts about the latest option during a meeting of 27 EU ambassadors on Wednesday, an EU official reported. They argued that von der Leyen’s willingness to use the money to replenish Ukraine’s dwindling stockpile of weapons complicated the negotiations as it had previously been agreed that €3bn of revenue would go towards Ukraine’s reconstruction.
