BRUSSELS — Belgian Prime Minister Bart De Wever couldn’t believe POLITICO named him as one of the four “bad boy” leaders likely to disrupt Thursday’s EU summit.
In fact, he disagreed with it so much he brought it up at the gathering, during a press conference to discuss his opposition to the bloc’s plan to use frozen Russian assets to fund a loan to Ukraine.
“POLITICO said that I’m a bad boy,” he said. “A bad boy! Me? Can you imagine that?”
Ahead of the summit, which touched on climate targets, the housing crisis and defense as well as the assets issue, POLITICO said De Wever, Slovakia’s Robert Fico, Hungary’s Viktor Orbán and German Chancellor Friedrich Merz were likely to be the biggest thorns in the EU side.
As it turned out, De Wever was the only one who really followed through on his threats. He forced his fellow leaders to water down their language on assets and push any decision to December. “I’m not a bad boy, we’re best boy in town,” he said. “If you talk about immobilized assets, we’re the very, very best.”
As custodian of the Euroclear depository, Belgium holds close to €170 billion of Russian cash reserves and is therefore most exposed to potential litigation and damages if the gambit is successfully challenged by Moscow.
Belgium warned during the talks that its key conditions for supporting using the funds in the form of a loan for Kyiv had not been met, according to four diplomats and officials. It had been seeking protections in the event of a judicial ruling against the move and burden-sharing in case it is forced to repay the money.
According to European Council conclusions agreed late Thursday night, the bloc’s executive will now be tasked with presenting a series of options to placate critics ahead of the next summit on Dec. 19.
It was “a bit sour we are being finger-pointed now as the unwilling country,” De Wever told reporters.
The post A POLITICO bad boy? Me?! cries Belgian PM De Wever appeared first on Politico.
