EU Summit Leaves Ukraine Funding and Migration Unsettled

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy asked EU leaders for at least €70 billion in additional funding next year, but the Brussels summit ended without a decision on Ukraine financing or the bloc’s next long-term budget. Leaders pushed the questions to further meetings in November and December, leaving proposed spending and competing national positions unresolved.

Funding Without a Decision

Zelenskyy said Ukraine’s war costs would reach €155 billion and that the requested money was needed for defence, weapons and resilience. He told leaders Ukraine could produce two or three times more drones, depending on the type, but lacked the funds. Ukraine also told the G7 that €40 billion of its 2027 defence needs was unfunded.

Zelenskyy appealed for more Patriot missiles and asked European countries to draw on their own stocks, including air-defence systems, to meet Ukraine’s winter needs. Al Jazeera correspondent Rosie Birchard described the appeal as emotional and said using European stocks could compromise some countries’ national security.

EU leaders asked the Commission to prepare a financing proposal. European Council President Antonio Costa said leaders had agreed to address Ukraine’s additional 2027 financing needs. “This is no time to withdraw support to Ukraine. This is no time to relieve Russia’s sanctions. Now it is time to increase our support, to increase our pressure,” he said.

European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said Russia was trying to destroy energy and water infrastructure and pledged, “But we stand by your side. We will support you as we did in the other winters.” She later said the €70 billion “has to be covered” and urged partner countries to “step in.”

Estonian Prime Minister Kristen Michal said the EU would probably need to provide a new loan to cover Ukraine’s budget gap. Austrian Chancellor Christian Stocker called for figures to be put in context and for the source of the shortfall to be explained. The EU was already paying instalments of a €90 billion loan intended to cover Kyiv’s funding through the end of 2027.

Who Controls the Assets?

Leaders discussed another EU loan, funds from Ukraine’s non-EU allies and untapped EU funds. Zelenskyy’s request renewed debate over frozen Russian central-bank assets. France 24 reported calls to use about €200 billion, while POLITICO described discussion of roughly €300 billion. Belgium holds most of the assets and remained opposed to using them.

German Chancellor Friedrich Merz rejected a US proposal to move some immobilised Russian central-bank reserves into a Washington-overseen vehicle. “These are assets that are frozen in Europe, and they should remain frozen in Europe. This is our business, and we will decide on it,” Merz said. Latvia’s premier Andris Kulbergs said the frozen assets should support Ukraine, while Swedish Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson said short-term support had to come from other sources.

The summit also left the EU’s 2028-2034 budget unresolved. The long-term budget is nearly €2 trillion and includes almost €100 billion for Ukraine. Kristersson said member states were “incredibly far apart” and that there was not “a shred of agreement.” Germany led a group seeking a smaller budget, while the “Friends of Cohesion” called for a larger one. Leaders scheduled an extraordinary summit on the bloc’s budget dispute for November 26.

Migration Dispute at the Summit

Denmark, Italy and Poland proposed summit conclusions linking irregular migration to crime rates and describing it as a threat to European social cohesion. Diplomats told POLITICO that around 10 countries, including Hungary, supported the proposal. Leaders deleted the proposed paragraphs from the final conclusions, keeping only a shortened version.

The proposal indirectly targeted Spain, where Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez’s plan to regularize about 1 million irregular migrants had caused clashes with Italy’s Giorgia Meloni and Denmark’s Mette Frederiksen. French President Emmanuel Macron called the migration debate excessively “politicized” and said it had been “a bad debate because it has been highly politicized and it has been a major source of division around the table.”

Von der Leyen said the Commission would propose an emergency response framework before the end of the year, allowing EU countries to respond to sudden mass movements such as the one that caused disruption in the Spanish exclave of Ceuta over the summer. The summit concluded without endorsing specific Ukraine-funding options, while leaders narrowed the migration language before issuing their final conclusions.