BRUSSELS — When it comes to support for Ukraine, a split has emerged between the European Union and its English-speaking allies. In France and Germany, the EU’s two biggest democracies, new polling shows that more respondents want their governments to scale back financial aid to Kyiv than to increase it or keep it the same. In the United States, Canada and the United Kingdom, meanwhile, respondents tilt the other way and favor maintaining material support, according to The POLITICO Poll, which surveyed more than 10,000 people across the five countries earlier this month. The findings land as European leaders prepare to meet in Brussels on Thursday for a high-stakes summit where providing financial support to Ukraine is expected to dominate the agenda. They also come as Washington seeks to mediate a peace agreement between Moscow and Kyiv — with German leader Friedrich Merz taking the lead among European nations on negotiating in Kyiv’s favor. Across all five countries, the most frequently cited reason for supporting continued aid to Ukraine was the belief that nations should not be allowed to seize territory by force. The most frequently cited argument against additional assistance was concerns about the cost and the pressure on the national economy.  “Much of our research has shown that the public in Europe feels the current era demands policy trade-offs, and financial support for Ukraine is no exception,” said Seb Wride, head of polling at Public First, an independent polling company headquartered in London that carried out the survey for POLITICO.  “In a time where public finances are seen as finite resources, people’s interests are increasingly domestic,” he added.  WESTERN DIVIDE Germans were the most reluctant to ramp up financial assistance, with nearly half of respondents (45 percent) in favor of cutting financial aid to Kyiv while only 20 percent wanted to increase it. In France 37 percent wanted to give less and 24 percent preferred giving more. In contrast to the growing opposition to Ukrainian aid from Europe, support remains strikingly firm in North America. In the U.S., President Donald Trump has expressed skepticism toward Kyiv’s chances of defeating Moscow and has sent interlocutors to bargain with the Russians for peace. And yet the U.S. had the largest share of respondents (37 percent) in favor of increasing financial support, with Canada just behind at 35 percent. Support for Ukraine was driven primarily by those who backed Democratic nominee Kamala Harris in the 2024 election in the U.S. Some 29 percent of Harris voters said one of the top three reasons the U.S. should support Ukraine was to protect democracy, compared with 17 percent of supporters of U.S. President Donald Trump. “The partisan split in the U.S. is now quite extreme,” Wride said. In Germany and France, opposition to assistance was especially pronounced among supporters of far-right parties — such as the Alternative for Germany and France’s National Rally — while centrists were less skeptical. “How Ukraine financing plays out in Germany in particular, as a number of European governments face populist challenges, should be a particular warning sign to other leaders,” Wride said. REFUGEE FATIGUE Support for military assistance tracked a similar divide. Nearly 40 percent of respondents in the U.S., U.K. and Canada backed higher levels of military aid, with about 20 percent opposed. In Germany 26 percent supported increased military aid to Ukraine while 39 percent opposed it. In France opinions were evenly split, with 31 percent favoring an increase and 30 percent favoring cuts. Germany was also the only country where a majority of respondents said their government should accept fewer Ukrainians displaced by the war.  In a country that has taken in more than a million Ukrainian refugees since the beginning of Russia’s full-scale invasion in 2022, 50 percent of Germans said Berlin should admit fewer.  Half of respondents also said Germany should reduce support for Ukrainians already settled in the country — a sign that public fatigue is extending beyond weapons and budgets to the broader social and political pressures of the conflict. The softer support for Ukraine in France and Germany does not appear to reflect warmer feelings toward Moscow, however. Voters in all five countries backed sanctions against Russia, suggesting that even where publics want to pare back aid they remain broadly aligned around punishing the aggressor and limiting Russia’s ability to finance the war. This edition of The POLITICO Poll was conducted from Dec. 5 to Dec. 9 and surveyed 10,510 adults online, with at least 2,000 respondents each from the U.S., Canada, the U.K., France and Germany. The results for each country were weighted to be representative in terms of age, gender and geography, and have an overall margin of sampling error of ±2 percentage points for each country. Smaller subgroups have higher margins of error. The survey is an ongoing project from POLITICO and Public First, an independent polling company headquartered in London, to measure public opinion across a broad range of policy areas. You can find new surveys and analysis each month at politico.com/poll. Have questions or comments? Ideas for future surveys? Email us at poll@politico.com.

Top EU diplomat Kaja Kallas said Monday that financing Ukraine via a loan based on Russia’s frozen assets was now looking “increasingly difficult” ahead of a crunch European Council summit on Thursday. Kallas’ warning on the narrowing path to securing a deal on Russia’s immobilized billions came as European leaders gather in Berlin to try to influence the shape of a potential peace deal in discussions with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and envoys from U.S. President Donald Trump. EU leaders including German Chancellor Friedrich Merz insist that using Russia’s frozen assets is the only credible method for Europe to keep Ukraine financially afloat from next year. But in the run-up to the summit in Brussels, fears are growing that the push could be derailed by opposition from EU states, who are under pressure from both Russia and the United States. While Belgian Prime Minister Bart De Wever has mentioned threats from Russia if Brussels seizes the assets — and Moscow has already taken steps to sue the Belgian bank where most of the cash is held — two senior European officials involved with the loan effort said the U.S. was also pressuring EU states to go against the scheme. “The Americans are not only demanding that Ukraine cede territories Russia did not manage to take, but are also pushing several European countries not to give Ukraine a €210 billion reparations loan,” said one of the senior European officials. According to a leaked U.S.-Russia draft peace plan, Washington intends to direct part of the assets toward U.S.-led reconstruction efforts, and the same European officials said the U.S. had not dropped its basic opposition to Europe using the assets to help Ukraine. Germany’s Merz has already insisted that the Russian assets should not be transferred to America’s economic advantage. Speaking on her way into a gathering of foreign ministers in Brussels, Kallas noted “significant pressure from all sides” over the reparations loan, which she called the “most credible option” to keep Kyiv financially afloat from next year. “This [reparations loan] is what we’re working on. We are not there yet and it is increasingly difficult, but we’re doing the work and we still have some days,” she said. Belgium has long been opposed to using Russia’s frozen assets to help Ukraine, arguing that this would imperil the peace process and expose Brussels to legal retaliation from Russia. In recent days, Italy, Bulgaria and Malta came out against the scheme, while Hungary and Slovakia have previously voiced opposition. Over the weekend, Czechia’s newly-installed prime minister, Andrej Babiš, came out against the loan, saying Prague would not provide any financial guarantees to back up Belgium. The EU doesn’t need unanimous backing to tap the assets following a decision last week to use emergency powers to immobilize the assets indefinitely. A vote by qualified majority could still pass even if all seven countries cited above oppose it, given that a blocking minority requires 35 percent of the EU’s population.  But Kallas said that it would “not be easy” to override Belgium, given that the bulk of the assets are in the country. “I think it’s important that they are on board with whatever we do.” The threats against Belgium appear to be ramping up. A joint investigation by EU Observer, Humo, De Morgen and Dossier Center stated that the chief executive of Euroclear, Valérie Urbain, has been the subject of threats and intimidation from a Russia-sympathizing French banker linked to Euroclear, requiring her to contract private security. In response, former Estonian Prime Minister Kallas said “some countries are more used to the threats presented by Russia than others — but I want to tell you these are only threats. If we keep united, we are much stronger.”

Belarus released more than 100 political prisoners, including Nobel Peace Prize winner Ales Bialiatski and activist Maria Kolesnikova, multiple media outlets reported on Saturday. Belarus released a total of 123 prisoners following talks between authoritarian President Alexander Lukashenko and U.S. President Donald Trump’s special envoy for Belarus John Coale, BBC reported. The U.S. reportedly agreed to lift sanctions on potash, a key fertilizer component and an important export for Belarus, a historical ally of Russia. Kolesnikova was sentenced four years ago to a long prison term after being convicted of attempting to seize power illegally. 

BRUSSELS — Italy is throwing its weight behind Belgium in opposing the EU’s plan to send €210 billion of Russia’s frozen state assets to Ukraine, according to an internal document seen by POLITICO. The intervention by Rome, the EU’s No.3 in terms of population and voting power — less than a week before a crucial meeting of EU leaders in Brussels — undermines the European Commission’s hopes of finalizing a deal on the plan. The Commission is pushing for EU member countries to reach an agreement in a European Council summit on Dec.18-19 so that the billions of euros in Russian reserves held in the Euroclear bank in Belgium can be freed up to support Kyiv’s war-battered economy.  Belgium’s government is holding out over fears it will be on the hook to repay the full amount if Russia claws back the money, but has so far lacked a heavyweight ally ahead of the December summit. Now Italy has shaken up the diplomatic dynamics by drafting a document with Belgium, Malta and Bulgaria urging the Commission to explore alternative options to using the Russian assets to keep Ukraine afloat over the coming years. The four countries said they “invite the Commission and the Council to continue exploring and discussing alternative options in line with EU and international law, with predictable parameters, presenting significantly less risks, to address Ukraine’s financial needs, based on an EU loan facility or bridge solutions.” The four countries are referring to a Plan B to issue joint EU debt to finance Ukraine over the coming years. However, this idea has its own problems. Critics note it will add to the high debt burdens of Italy and France, and requires unanimity — meaning it can be vetoed by Hungary’s Kremlin-friendly Prime Minister Viktor Orbán. The four countries — even if joined by pro-Kremlin Hungary and Slovakia — would not be able to build a blocking minority but their public criticism erodes the Commission’s hopes of striking a political deal next week. While Italy’s right-wing Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni has always supported sanctions against Russia, the government coalition she leads is divided over supporting Ukraine. Hard-right Deputy Prime Minister Matteo Salvini has embraced a Russia-friendly stance and endorsed U.S. President Donald Trump’s plan to end the war in Ukraine. EMERGENCY RULE Offering a further criticism, the four countries expressed skepticism toward the Commission seizing on emergency powers to overhaul the current sanctions rules and keep Russia’s assets frozen in the long-term. Despite voting in favor of this move to preserve EU unity, they said they were wary of then progressing to use the Russian assets themselves. “This vote does not pre-empt in any circumstances the decision on the possible use of Russian immobilised assets that needs to be taken at Leaders’ level,” the four countries wrote. The legal mechanism for long-term freeze is meant to reduce the chance that pro-Kremlin countries in Europe, such as Hungary and Slovakia, will hand back the frozen funds to Russia. Officials claim this workaround undermines the Kremlin’s chances of liberating its assets as part of a post-war peace settlement — and therefore strengthens the EU’s separate plan to make use of that money.   However, the four countries wrote that the legal clause “implies very far reaching legal, financial, procedural, and institutional consequences that might go well beyond this specific case.”

Russia’s central bank on Friday filed a lawsuit in Moscow against Brussels-based Euroclear, which houses most of the frozen Russian assets that the EU wants to use to finance aid to Ukraine. The court filing comes just days before a high-stakes European Council summit, where EU leaders are expected to press Belgium to unlock billions of euros in Russian assets to underpin a major loan package for Kyiv.   “Due to the unlawful actions of the Euroclear depository that are causing losses to the Bank of Russia, and in light of mechanisms officially under consideration by the European Commission for the direct or indirect use of the Bank of Russia’s assets without its consent, the Bank of Russia is filing a claim in the Moscow Arbitration Court against the Euroclear depository to recover the losses incurred,” the central bank said in a statement. Belgium has opposed the use of sovereign Russian assets over concerns that the country may eventually be required to pay the money back to Moscow on its own. Some €185 billion in frozen Russian assets are under the stewardship of Euroclear, the Brussels-based financial depository, while another €25 billion is scattered across the EU in private bank accounts. With the future of the prospective loan still hanging in the air, EU ambassadors on Thursday handed emergency powers to the European Commission to keep Russian state assets permanently frozen. Such a solution would mean the assets remain blocked until the Kremlin pays post-war reparations to Ukraine, significantly reducing the possibility that pro-Russian countries like Hungary or Slovakia would hand back the frozen funds to Russia. While Russian courts have little power to force the handover of Euroclear’s euro or dollar assets held in Belgium, they do have the power to take retaliatory action against Euroclear balances held in Russian financial institutions. However, in 2024 the European Commission introduced a legal mechanism to compensate Euroclear for losses incurred in Russia due to its compliance with Western sanctions — effectively neutralizing the economic effects of Russia’s retaliation. Euroclear declined to comment.

LONDON — The U.K. has imposed new sanctions on senior commanders of the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) amid escalating atrocities in Sudan. The move aims at key figures accused of mass killings, sexual violence and targeted attacks on civilians in El Fasher, including Abdul Rahim Hamdan Dagalo, the RSF’s deputy leader and brother of commander Mohamed “Hemedti” Dagalo. Three other senior RSF officers will also now face asset freezes and travel bans to the U.K. Foreign Secretary Yvette Cooper said the sanctions sent a message that atrocities “cannot and will not go unpunished.” While the U.K. has targeted other RSF figures before, the paramilitary group’s recent sharing of footage of their own alleged crimes has made it easier to establish the basis for sanctions. The penalties announced Friday coincide with a fresh £21 million aid package intended to provide food, clean water, healthcare and protection for tens of thousands caught in what the U.K. government has termed the world’s worst humanitarian crisis. The administration in London has been under pressure from lawmakers to do more to stop the bloodshed. The U.K.’s action follows the U.S. decision this week to sanction a network it says is recruiting former Colombian soldiers to fight in Sudan’s civil war, while the European Union has also targeted RSF leadership for alleged crimes in Darfur. Sudan has been locked in a civil war for two and a half years, with the Sudanese Armed Forces pitted against the Rapid Support Forces paramilitary group, which international institutions have accused the United Arab Emirates of backing. Since becoming foreign secretary, Cooper has sought to place particular emphasis on the conflict in Sudan and has discussed it with her U.S. counterpart Marco Rubio on several occasions. Donald Trump signaled a new interest in ending the violence in Sudan after meeting Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman in November, but it’s not yet clear if that will be sustained.

BRUSSELS — European banks and other finance firms should decrease their reliance on American tech companies for digital services, a top national supervisor has said. In an interview with POLITICO, Steven Maijoor, the Dutch central bank’s chair of supervision, said the “small number of suppliers” providing digital services to many European finance companies can pose a “concentration risk.” “If one of those suppliers is not able to supply, you can have major operational problems,” Maijoor said. The intervention comes as Europe’s politicians and industries grapple with the continent’s near-total dependence on U.S. technology for digital services ranging from cloud computing to software. The dominance of American companies has come into sharp focus following a decline in transatlantic relations under U.S. President Donald Trump. While the market for European tech services isn’t nearly as developed as in the U.S. — making it difficult for banks to switch — the continent “should start to try to develop this European environment” for financial stability and the sake of its economic success, Maijoor said. European banks being locked in to contracts with U.S. providers “will ultimately also affect their competitiveness,” Maijoor said. Dutch supervisors recently authored a report on the systemic risks posed by tech dependence in finance. Dutch lender Amsterdam Trade Bank collapsed in 2023 after its parent company was placed on the U.S. sanctions list and its American IT provider withdrew online data storage services, in one of the sharpest examples of the impact on companies that see their tech withdrawn. Similarly a 2024 outage of American cybersecurity company CrowdStrike highlighted the European finance sector’s vulnerabilities to operational risks from tech providers, the EU’s banking watchdog said in a post-mortem on the outage. In his intervention, Maijoor pointed to an EU law governing the operational reliability of banks — the Digital Operational Resilience Act (DORA) — as one factor that may be worsening the problem. Those rules govern finance firms’ outsourcing of IT functions such as cloud provision, and designate a list of “critical” tech service providers subject to extra oversight, including Amazon Web Services, Google Cloud, Microsoft and Oracle. DORA, and other EU financial regulation, may be “inadvertently nudging financial institutions towards the largest digital service suppliers,” which wouldn’t be European, Maijoor said. “If you simply look at quality, reliability, security … there’s a very big chance that you will end up with the largest digital service suppliers from outside Europe,” he said. The bloc could reassess the regulatory approach to beat the risks, Maijoor said. “DORA currently is an oversight approach, which is not as strong in terms of requirements and enforcement options as regular supervision,” he said. The Dutch supervisors are pushing for changes, writing that they are examining whether financial regulation and supervision in the EU creates barriers to choosing European IT providers, and that identified issues “may prompt policy initiatives in the European context.” They are asking EU governments and supervisors “to evaluate whether DORA sufficiently enhances resilience to geopolitical risks and, if not, to consider issuing further guidance,” adding they “see opportunities to strengthen DORA as needed,” including through more enforcement and more explicit requirements around managing geopolitical risks. Europe could also set up a cloud watchdog across industries to mitigate the risks of dependence on U.S. tech service providers, which are “also very important for other parts of the economy like energy and telecoms,” Maijoor said. “Wouldn’t there be a case for supervision more generally of these hyperscalers, cloud service providers, as they are so important for major parts of the economy?” The European Commission declined to respond.

ATHENS — The country that almost got kicked out of the eurozone is now running the powerful EU body that rescued it from bankruptcy. Greece’s finance minister, Kyriakos Pierrakakis, on Thursday beat Belgian Deputy Prime Minister Vincent Van Peteghem in a two-horse race for the Eurogroup presidency. Although an informal forum for eurozone finance ministers, the post has proved pivotal in overcoming crises — notably the sovereign debt crisis, which resulted in three bailouts of the Greek government. That was 10 years ago, when Pierrakakis’ predecessor described the Eurogroup as a place fit only for psychopaths. Today, Athens presents itself as a poster child of fiscal prudence after dramatically reducing its debt pile to around 147 percent of its economic output — albeit still the highest tally in the eurozone. “My generation was shaped by an existential crisis that revealed the power of resilience, the cost of complacency, the necessity of reform, and the strategic importance of European solidarity,” Pierrakakis wrote in his motivational letter for the job. “Our story is not only national; it is deeply European.” Few diplomats initially expected the 42-year-old computer scientist and political economist to win the race to lead the Eurogroup after incumbent Paschal Donohoe’s shock resignation last month. Belgium’s Van Peteghem could boast more experience and held a great deal of respect within the eurozone, setting him up as the early favorite to win. But Belgium’s continued reluctance to back the European Commission’s bid to use the cash value of frozen Russian assets to finance a €165 billion reparations loan to Ukraine ultimately contributed to Van Peteghem’s defeat. NOT TYPICAL Pierrakakis isn’t a typical member of the center-right ruling New Democracy party, which belongs to the European People’s Party. His political background is a socialist one, having served as an advisor to the centre-left PASOK party from 2009, when Greece plunged into financial crisis. He was even one of the Greek technocrats negotiating with the country’s creditors. The Harvard and MIT graduate joined New Democracy to support Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis’ bid for the party leadership in 2015, because he felt that they shared a political vision. Pierrakakis got his big political break when New Democracy won the national election in 2019, after four years of serving as a director of the research and policy institute diaNEOsis. He was named minister of digital governance, overseeing Greece’s efforts to modernize the country’s creaking bureaucracy, adopting digital solutions for everything from Cabinet meetings to medical prescriptions. Those efforts made him one of the most popular ministers in the Greek cabinet — so much so that Pierrakakis is often touted as Mitsotakis’ likely successor for the party leadership in the Greek press. Few diplomats initially expected the 42-year-old computer scientist and political economist to win the race to lead the Eurogroup after incumbent Paschal Donohoe’s shock resignation last month. | Nicolas Economou/Getty Images After the re-election of New Democracy in 2023, Pierrakakis took over the Education Ministry, where he backed controversial legislation that paved the way for the establishment of private universities in Greece. A Cabinet reshuffle in March placed him within the finance ministry, where he has sped up plans to pay down Greece’s debt to creditors and pledged to bring the country’s debt below 120 percent of GDP before 2030.

BRUSSELS — Russian state assets in Europe could remain permanently frozen under a legal mechanism approved by EU capitals on Thursday. The EU’s ambassadors handed emergency powers to the European Commission to keep €210 billion in Russian state assets blocked until the Kremlin pays post-war reparations to Ukraine, the Danish Council presidency announced on Thursday. It said that ambassadors had “agreed on a revised version of the Art. 122-proposal and approved the launch of a written procedure for formal Council decision by tomorrow around 5 pm.” The decision was taken by a “very clear majority.” The legal mechanism deals a major blow to the Kremlin’s hopes of unfreezing its money as part of a post-war peace settlement — an idea that has been championed by U.S. President Donald Trump but remains unpopular in Europe. The EU’s new emergency powers will remain in place until “Russia ceases its war of aggression against Ukraine, and provides reparations to Ukraine,” according to a legal text, seen by POLITICO, that was backed by the EU’s 27 ambassadors on Thursday afternoon. In a major boost to Ukraine, the legal workaround significantly reduces the chance that pro-Kremlin countries in Europe, such as Hungary and Slovakia, will hand back the frozen funds to Russia. The emergency clause effectively overhauls the current rules, which compel EU countries to unanimously reauthorize the sanctions every six months.  Kremlin-friendly countries are thereby set to lose their power to release the sanctioned money simply by voting “no” on sanctions renewal. Were that to happen after the EU provided an assets-backed loan to Kyiv, the EU’s 27 capitals would be on the hook to repay the loan to Russia. The EU justified the seismic legal change on the grounds that handing back the assets to Russia would wreak havoc on the EU economy — and potentially fuel hybrid attacks by the Kremlin across the bloc. Keeping the assets frozen “is a measure that is appropriate in order to avoid further repercussions of unprecedented magnitude on the economic situation of the Union caused by Russia’s actions,” the Commission wrote in the legal text. The EU executive initially proposed the legal mechanism to strengthen a separate plan to mobilize €210 billion in frozen Russian assets for Ukraine — most of which are held by the Belgian-based Euroclear.  Belgium, however, is opposed to the plan over fears that it will be on the hook to repay the loan if Russia claws back the money. In order to allay Belgium’s concerns, the Commission stripped references to the loan from the legal proposal that was approved Thursday. Giovanna Faggionato contributed to this report.

BRUSSELS ― Europe’s strategy for convincing the Belgians to support its plan to fund Ukraine? Warn them they could be treated like Hungary. At their summit on Dec. 18, EU leaders’ key task will be to win over Bart De Wever, the bloc’s latest bête noire. Belgium’s prime minister is vetoing their efforts to pull together a €210 billion loan to Ukraine as it faces a huge financial black hole and as the war with Russian grinds on. De Wever has dug his heels in for so long over the plan to fund the loan using frozen Russian assets ― which just happen to be mostly housed in Belgium ― that diplomats from across the bloc are now working on strategies to get him on board. De Wever is holding out over fears Belgium will be on the hook should the money need to be paid back, and has now asked for more safety nets. Nearly all the Russian assets are housed in Euroclear, a financial depository in Brussels. He wants the EU to provide an extra cash buffer on top of financial guarantees and increased safeguards to cover potential legal disputes and settlements — an idea many governments oppose. Belgium has sent a list of amendments it wants, to ensure it isn’t forced to repay the money to Moscow alone if sanctions are lifted. De Wever said he won’t back the reparations loan if his concerns aren’t met. Leaders thought they’d have a deal the last time they all met in October. Then, it was unthinkable they wouldn’t get one in December. Now it looks odds-on. All hope isn’t lost yet, diplomats say. Ambassadors will go line by line through Belgium’s requests, figure out the biggest concerns and seek to address them. There’s still room for maneuver. The plan is to come as close to the Belgian position as they can. But a week before leaders meet, the EU is turning the screws. If De Wever continues to block the plan ― a path he’s been on for several months, putting forward additional conditions and demands ― he will find himself in an uncomfortable and remarkable position for the leader of a country that for so long has been pro-EU, according to an EU diplomat with knowledge of the discussions taking place. The Belgium leader would be frozen out and ignored, just like Hungary’s Viktor Orbán has been given the cold shoulder over democratic backsliding and his refusal to play ball on sanctioning Russia. The message to Belgium is that if it does not come on board, its diplomats, ministers and leaders will lose their voice around the EU table. Officials would put to the bottom of the pile Belgium’s wishlist and concerns related to the EU’s long-term budget for 2028–2034, which would cause the government a major headache, particularly when negotiations get into the crucial final stretch in 18 months’ time. Nearly all the Russian assets are housed in Euroclear, a financial depository in Brussels. | Ansgar Haase/Getty Images Its views on EU proposals will not be sought. Its phone calls will go unanswered, the diplomat said. It would be a harsh reality for a country that is both literally and symbolically at the heart of the EU project, and that has punched above its weight when it comes to taking on leading roles such as the presidency of the European Council. But diplomats say desperate times call for desperate measures. Ukraine faces a budget shortfall next year of €71.7 billion, and will have to start cutting public spending from April unless it can secure the money. U.S. President Donald Trump has again distanced himself from providing American support. Underscoring the high stakes, EU ambassadors are meeting three times this week — on Wednesday, Friday and Sunday — for talks on the Commission’s proposal for the loan, published last week.   PLAN B — AND PLAN C — FOR UKRAINE The European Commission put forward one other option for funding Ukraine: joint debt backed by the EU’s next seven-year budget. Hungary has formally ruled out issuing eurobonds, and raising debt through the EU budget to prop up Ukraine requires a unanimous vote. That leaves a Plan C: for some countries to dig into their own treasuries to keep Ukraine afloat. That prospect isn’t among the Commission’s proposals, but diplomats are quietly discussing it. Germany, the Nordics and the Baltics are seen as the most likely participants. But those floating the idea have a warning: The most significant benefit conferred by EU membership to countries around the bloc is solidarity. By forcing some member countries to carry the financial burden of supporting Ukraine alone, the bloc risks a serious split at its core. Germany in future may not choose to prop up a failing bank in a country that doesn’t stump up the cash for Kyiv now, the thinking goes. “Solidarity is a two-way street,” a diplomat said. For sure, there is another way — but only in theory. De Wever’s fellow EU leaders could band together and pass the “reparation loan” plan via so-called qualified majority voting, ignoring Belgium’s rejections and just steamrollering it through. But diplomats said this is not being seriously considered. Bjarke Smith-Meyer and Gregorio Sorgi contributed reporting.