European Union leaders have agreed to reopen the sensitive question of financing for Ukraine after Volodymyr Zelensky told their Brussels summit that his country needs an additional 70 billion euro next year to hold back Russia's all-out war.
"The war will cost 155 billion euro next year," the Ukrainian president told leaders around the table on Friday. "And we need at least 70 billion euro more from you, for defence, for weapons, and for our resilience. This is a realistic amount." The request lands on top of the 90 billion euro loan agreed last year to cover Kyiv's needs for 2026 and 2027.
The Commission goes back to the drawing board
Summit conclusions tasked the European Commission with presenting new options to fill the gap. Ursula von der Leyen, the Commission president, endorsed Mr Zelensky's estimate, admitting it had been "hard to predict" the cost of the war when the 90 billion euro loan was struck, with Moscow now deliberately targeting Ukraine's economy and its ability to collect revenue. She stressed, however, that the EU would not cover the sum alone: a share, yet to be determined, should fall to other Western allies, a formulation that points directly at Washington and London.
There was concrete movement too. Leaders welcomed the release of 6.6 billion euro under the European Peace Facility, agreed to extend and revise the EU's military assistance mission, and noted the establishment of an integrated anti-ballistic missile coalition. They condemned Russia's systematic attacks on civilians, energy infrastructure and Black Sea shipping, including recent serious incidents in the exclusive economic zones of Bulgaria and Romania.
The Summit at a Glance
- Zelensky asked EU leaders for an extra 70 billion euro for 2027, on top of the 90 billion euro loan.
- The Commission must now present options to plug the gap; von der Leyen says allies must share the load.
- Leaders released 6.6 billion euro for military support and extended the EUMAM training mission.
- Denmark, Italy and Poland forced a row over migration, targeting Spain's regularisation plan.
- No deal was reached on the EU's long-term budget; a competitiveness retreat is set for February.
Migration splits the table
If Ukraine showed the Union at its most united, migration showed it at its rawest. Denmark, Poland and Italy pushed amendments to the summit conclusions condemning so-called "pull factor" policies, an indirect reference to Spain's plan to regularise around 600,000 undocumented migrants. A hardline draft urging countries to avoid "measures that could create incentives for illegal migration" was in the end rejected, and a shorter, lighter text adopted, but not before the talks ran hours beyond their scheduled finish.
"We had a bad debate," Emmanuel Macron conceded afterwards, warning that ideological divisions were making the bloc ineffective. The French president backed Spain over the crisis in Ceuta, describing it as a "humanitarian tragedy" and a "hybrid attack" on Madrid. The Czech prime minister, Andrej Babiš, went furthest, accusing Pedro Sánchez of replacing Spaniards with migrants to cling to power.
Trump looms over it all
Hanging over the summit was Washington. President Trump this week called Ukraine's strikes on Russian oil refineries a "disgrace" and told an American network he finds Mr Zelensky "more difficult to deal with than Putin". The Ukrainian president was unmoved: "We were attacked, occupied, and our people were killed. It is only logical that we have the right to defend ourselves."
Elsewhere, leaders handed Friedrich Merz a mandate for new trade defence tools aimed at Chinese subsidies, the German chancellor declaring the combustion engine phase-out "now history" and announcing a second competitiveness retreat at Alden Biesen castle for February. The long-term budget, by contrast, went unresolved, ensuring that February's gathering inherits the two hardest files in Brussels: money for Ukraine, and money for everything else.