Brussels – “We will honour our commitments, one way or another.” The Commissioner for Economic Affairs, Valdis Dombrovskis, wants to send a message to Kyiv and international observers: the European Union will not back down on the €90 billion loan to Ukraine. Dombrovskis offers no explanations or details on how the money needed by the Eastern European partner will be made available, but he wants to be clear about the EU’s unyielding position.
“There is an agreement reached in December,” recalls the European Commissioner during the press conference held at the end of the Ecofin Council. After that agreement reached at the level of heads of state and government, the European Parliament’s green light also arrived, and the obstacle of the Hungarian veto must be circumvented: the credibility of the European Union is at stake, which is why the EU executive assures that it will proceed as planned.
Of course, Dombrovskis himself admits, “it is becoming urgent to finalise the work, because we wanted to start providing economic support in April and we are already halfway through March.” The deadline is just around the corner, and to start paying the promised funds into the Ukrainian state coffers, the Commission must first go to the market to find them, which it cannot do. The hope remains that a “way out” will be found as soon as possible, perhaps at next week’s European Council summit (19–20 marzo), but if that does not happen, “one way or another, we will honour the commitments” we have made. This is where the Commissioner for Economic Affairs emphasises the EU’s decision to go beyond Hungary and its Prime Minister, Viktor Orbán.
All the more so because a signal needs to be sent to the Kremlin, Dombrovskis insists: “We must keep up the pressure on Russia,” and the agreement on the €90 billion loan that Ukraine needs to keep going financially in 2026 and 2027 also responds to this need.
English version by the Translation Service of Withub
