PNN – The Belgium Parliament supported the firm opposition of the country’s Prime Minister to the sale of frozen Russian assets and granting loans from them to Ukraine to compensate for war damages.
According to the report of Pakistan News Network, quoting RIA Novosti, the Belgium Parliament unanimously supported Prime Minister Bart De Wever in his strong opposition to selling frozen Russian assets in Belgium and granting loans from them to Ukraine “to compensate for damages.”
In a session held on Thursday in the Belgian House of Representatives, De Wever and several government members warned about the potential legal and financial consequences of seizing these assets, especially assets deposited in Euroclear, a major European financial institution based in Brussels.
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The Prime Minister reiterated Belgium’s conditions for participating in any such action against Russia, including the need to share risks among EU member states and that the responsibility for partial and collective seizure should not fall on a single country.
According to media reports, not a single member of the Belgian Parliament, even from the opposition, objected to the government’s position, indicating a rare national consensus on this sensitive issue.
The German magazine “Der Spiegel” reported that Friedrich Merz, the country’s Chancellor, decided to cancel his trip to Norway on Friday to go to Belgium and meet with De Wever, aiming to convince him of the necessity of taking action regarding the frozen Russian assets.
These developments occur within the framework of the European Commission’s intensive efforts to gain support from EU member states for using Russian sovereign assets to support Ukraine, an initiative that still faces legal and political considerations from several EU member countries.