- 10 months ago
As 2025 draws to a close, the European continent is facing the most pressing of problems: how to raise financial support for Ukraine, almost four years into Russia’s full-blown invasion. Kyiv’s financial resilience is eroding and thanks to an unpredictable Trump administration questioning the cost of collective defence, Europe is now faced with shouldering the burden. EU Commission President Ursula Von der Leyen warned this week that urgent measures are needed to fill Ukraine’s €135 billion budget shortfall for the next two years. One option would be tapping €185 billion in frozen Russian assets –a move that has faced opposition from the likes of Belgium, where most of the assets are located. If no agreement is made among member states before the end of the year, it could have disastrous consequences. Von Der Leyen has stressed that what happens in Ukraine is fundamental not only to the country’s survival but to Europe’s future. We debate the future of financing Ukraine with our guests at the European Parliament in Brussels.
Programme prepared by Oihana Almandoz, Perrine Desplats, Agnès Le Cossec and Isabelle Romero Find here information on the EU's support to Ukraine in 2025
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Programme prepared by Oihana Almandoz, Perrine Desplats, Agnès Le Cossec and Isabelle Romero Find here information on the EU's support to Ukraine in 2025
Visit our website:
http://www.france24.com
Like us on Facebook:
https://www.facebook.com/FRANCE24.English
Follow us on Twitter:
https://twitter.com/France24_en
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NewsTranscript
00:00hello and welcome to talking europe from the european parliament in brussels as 2025 comes
00:18to a close the european continent is facing the most pressing of problems how to raise financial
00:23support for ukraine almost four years into russia's full-blown invasion ukraine's financial
00:29resilience is eroding and thanks to an unpredictable trump administration questioning the cost of
00:34collective defense europe is now faced with shouldering the burden eu commission president
00:40ursula von der leyen announced this week that urgent measures were needed to fund ukraine's
00:45enormous 135 billion budget hall for the next two years this is ukrainian president voldemir
00:51zelensky is trying to reassure european partners in the face of a corruption scandal brewing at home
00:57and the russian forces making gains in the east of the country if no agreement is made among member
01:03states before the end of the year it could have disastrous consequences von der leyen stating
01:08that what plays out in ukraine is fundamental to the country itself as it is to the future of europe
01:13as a whole to talk about this i'm joined by two meps katrina rot nevidalova a non-attached
01:20slovakian mep from prime minister robert fitzo's smear party kicked out of the party of european
01:27socialists for being in their words too populist smear are currently in coalition with the far right
01:32in slovakia and or must pet an mp from estonia's liberal reform party part of a renew europe group
01:39and vice president of the foreign affairs committee in the european parliament he has previously served
01:44as estonia's minister of foreign affairs thanks to both of you for coming to speech to us on france
01:5024 or must pet i want to start with you uh in the next two years the eu is projected to contribute
01:56nearly as much as it has done over the last four years uh with the war in ukraine this increase we
02:02could directly correlate it to the return of president donald trump to the white house should the eu prepare
02:09for the fact that he can no longer rely on the united states when it comes to financing and
02:14providing weapons to ukraine obviously europe has to be in the position to give all support what is
02:23needed for ukraine and one remark the war against ukraine lasts already 11 years not four years
02:31and the damage caused by russia and ukraine of course is huge human losses but also collapse of
02:38different kind of infrastructure permanent bombings and so on but short answer is yes of course europe
02:44has to do everything to assist ukraine but it also means itself ourselves in europe um so no doubt of
02:54it and katrina roth as i mentioned injunction ursula von der leyen has put forward three proposals on how
03:01to to get this funding to support ukraine by the end of the year one proposal is quite controversial and
03:07that is using uh about 185 billion euros of uh frozen russian uh assets uh and has faced quite a lot of
03:14opposition from the likes of belgium where most of the assets are in fact located uh and there's some
03:20fear of a russian retaliation i believe that your government is also quite opposed to this move
03:25how so we are very much so thank you for the invitation once again uh yes we believe that uh we can
03:30support the ukraine uh with the means which we have but the european union doesn't have the money
03:34we cannot still borrow and borrow more and more money because it's spiraling us as the economy as
03:39well uh specifically on this issue of the russian assets which are frozen now in uh mostly in the
03:44belgian banks uh i am very glad that belgium is still trying to stop this decision and they want to
03:50have the decisions of the european union which would help them in the case of a possible future
03:56consequences from russian federation because this can come and i think that we should be also wise when
04:01we use or misuse the international law and this what we are planning to do we know that this is
04:05not in the line with international law we know that we were crossing the line also when we use uh the
04:09um the incentives from these russian assets now we want to use the assets itself and we know that
04:15this is breaking the law so once when we want to talk about the international law uh we also see uh what
04:20we are doing we should see what we are doing and we cannot just decide because we feel this is correct
04:24and this is good we have to have a clear decision before doing something like this and i think and also my
04:29government we feel that uh there should be more push also from the european union side and also
04:34from urshua von der leyen and other people to say that we have to push for diplomatic discussions for
04:40uh diplomatic resolution of this war and not just say that we will pay for everything because
04:43what is the last point how long we would pay for that we don't have really once again we don't have
04:49this money in the eu we already took loans because of the covet 19 which we will start to pay it's
04:54important to say that it's only to repay this loan back to the international markets we would need 10%
05:00of the european budget for the next seven years every year we would pay 10% of the budget only for
05:05this uh this repayment of the loan so to take another loan possibly if we uh will use the russian
05:10assets and we will beg them as the european union uh by our own money it's not it's not very clever way
05:16now is finally the way to push for diplomatic solution not for the money giving them
05:21remorse patch your thoughts i fully disagree with this statement of course europe uh has to use
05:29frozen russian assets to help to rebuild ukraine because the aggressor country russia has to pay
05:35for the damage they caused in ukraine but also in in other european countries so that for me it's
05:42obvious that we have to use russian assets to assist ukraine and to rebuild the country also after
05:49second world war lots of european countries got very quickly reparations from germany i don't see
05:57here any real difference and we also should understand that it is not only russian war against ukraine
06:03this is also russian okay we call it hybrid war but this is russian hybrid war also against europe
06:09we should recall all those explosions just recently in poland but also in other european countries
06:16made by russian so that we should finally realize that russia's target is not only ukraine the target
06:23is much well larger i would put so it's europe so that in this regard also europe finally
06:29has to forget all this wishful thinking and do what is necessary otherwise the price tag in final end
06:39will be much much higher and this is not only about the money it is also about human lives
06:45can i say something yes of course i disagree very much with what you said because between the second
06:50world war and today it's 80 years and there is a huge difference but aggressor is the same no no
06:55first of all the colleague first of all it was after the war when this repatriation and this money was
07:01given back to these countries which were damaged by by germany and there was international court which decided
07:06about these things and international community now we are still in the war and we are deciding ourselves
07:11like we have all the mites which we don't have we should we should first we should first
07:15because russia is sitting in united nations security council as permanent member please listen to me now
07:20in distance is collapsing everything this is destabilizing our um our position in the international
07:27community in international financial markets war is destabilizing europe and our position war is this
07:31states which have these assets like the belgium they know that this can uh really uh make a big
07:37troubles for them the the investors and the foreign countries can uh feel that we are not secure place
07:43to store the store their money they can withdraw they can feel that if this is the breaking of the
07:47international and we feel like this is okay they can do something against our companies and finally
07:51there is the moment when we need to say stop quiet and please discuss the things and not just say that
07:58we will use whatever means and when we use this asset has been discussed three and a half years
08:01afterwards three and a half years we will borrow what we will take another money as the loans for
08:06your solution is that we should do everything what russia wants my solution is to discuss and have a
08:12diplomatic we have discussed it three and a half years war is ongoing everyday people die in ukraine
08:16everyday people there are explosions in both poland in other european countries
08:21i would like to interject very quickly katerina roger i want to ask you a question because
08:26as we know slovakian uh prime minister robert fitzso has advocated a more russia-friendly foreign policy
08:32uh refusing to finance arms for ukraine am i correct no direct financing of weapons to ukraine
08:40uh this is not correct we are not uh we don't have any russian-friendly foreign policy we have the
08:45foreign policy that we believe that we would like to live in peace with everybody uh this war is
08:50threatening everybody and it's threatening mostly the people and the countries in the eastern part
08:53of the european union because we are also there are a lot of refugees coming from ukraine there are a
08:57lot of people who are who are coming and there are a lot of other threats which are coming with this
09:01but just to say that slovakia doesn't take part in a eu collective defense agenda am i correct
09:07yes we don't we we support ukraine with humanitarian aid with other any other means we support them with
09:13experts we also we are the only country in european union uh despite the fact that they are saying
09:18that we are whatever we are the only one uh sitting regularly with uh between the governments of
09:23ukraine and slovakia having common projects on the borders try to help the people and have a lot of
09:27investments and discussions about the the common future projects which can help also ukraine joining
09:32the european union because there are people who say like we will support them blah blah blah we don't
09:35support the military uh militarization and we don't support the the weapons for ukraine but we give
09:41them uh another means which are like for protecting uh it's unminding uh services and uh special vehicles
09:47so this is what we are giving to them but we don't uh we don't provide guns because we don't believe
09:52that this is the way how to end the war we believe that it's only the peacekeeping process this only
09:56diplomacy and only discussion how it should end so i just want to add that of course not part of it
10:00you collect a defense agenda but at the same time there are statistics showing that slovakia's arms
10:05exports actually grew yes uh about 1.5 billion euros last year notably to weapon sales to ukraine
10:12that's what i want to get my head around is why not take part in a collective eu agenda because we
10:18don't believe that this is how we should do that and also we had a previous government which was
10:21not ours uh which gave all the possible means which we had which was protecting the country they gave
10:27it to ukraine so we just we were left without any protection we have uh nuclear power plants in slovakia
10:32and they were not protected so we are now relying on the protection from different other countries
10:36uh surrounding slovakia so this was a very bad decision we don't believe in guns but what you
10:40say what you describe is the private companies which we have which is the arm industry in slovakia
10:46which is quite profitable we have to say that which is selling but it's the private companies not the
10:51state i want to get back to the deal the historic deal that was struck between france and ukraine
10:56just this week to buy 100 war planes and that follows on from a deal with sweden
11:00uh for 150 gripping e jets is it too little too late that europe has finally stepped up to the
11:07plate and has offered to sell their their greatest and their best weaponry to ukraine well i'm glad that
11:13this finally is happening but of course it's late because there has been too long time hesitation
11:19and no decisions but well if it's now finally uh happening well of course it's positive because if
11:26you have on the one hand aggressor country with the heavy armament with big army and then you
11:33say that well we will support ukraine maybe also with some humanitarian you know stuff then we know
11:39what is the end of this story uh so that unfortunately we have seen also in the recent history that the
11:46russian regime putin's regime understands only uh power and the problem has been that west western
11:54democracies have been too weak too long time that's why uh happened uh russian invasion again against
12:01georgia uh that's why already 11 years ago they attacked ukraine they did it again three and a half
12:07years ago they were free to do different attacks uh in different countries in europe uh i guess the
12:15only solution is that putin's regime should finally understand that west is not weak anymore we've come
12:21to the end of the show i want to thank both my guests today for coming to speak to us on france 24
12:25katrina rot niverlova and urmas pait thank you so much for speaking to us and for our viewers at
12:31home thanks for watching there's more news coming up on france 24 after this thank you very much
12:37you
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