Europe fails to reach deal on Ukraine, rearmament after emergency talks end without agreement

Europe remains divided on how to support Ukraine and shore up its defenses in the face of Russian aggression, as emergency summit talks ended without a consensus on Thursday.

A statement on Ukraine was signed by all but one of the 27 EU members with a lone country — believed to be Hungary — holding out.

As leaders pledged to ramp up defense spending, the main European powers couldn’t agree on what exactly that support for Ukraine might look like and how Europe should adapt to what many see as a new world order under President Trump.

“Europe is weak without the United States,” Bulgaria’s Prime Minister Rosen Zhelyazkov told reporters on Thursday. He added that he hoped “the US remains committed to our collective security, which is based on shared values.”

However, there was a major point of contention between the European nations over the seizure of some $227 billion in frozen Russian central bank reserves that have been held in Europe’s financial system since the start of the Ukraine war.

Ukraine — as well as some of its neighboring Eastern European countries, such as Poland and the Baltic states of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania — have called for the seizing of Russia’s money to pay for Ukraine’s reconstruction.

But officials from Belgium, France and Germany have warned that several legal obstacles stand in the way and that such a move could undermine confidence in the euro currency.

“I advocate great caution when it comes to those frozen assets,” Belgium’s Prime Minister Bart De Wever said at Thursday’s summit in his country.

“Countries that are already calling for the confiscation of those funds, they should be well aware of the economic risks they are taking. That is something that can really shock the world financial order. You should not take it lightly,” he warned.

So far, around $50 billion in assistance has been given to Ukraine using the accumulating interest on Russia’s frozen assets by the G7 group of nations.

That money will stay frozen “until Russia ceases its aggression and pays for the damage it has caused,” the G7 has said previously.

This is what the major European countries have been saying at Thursday’s summit.

Germany

“We must be able to defend ourselves so that we don’t have to defend ourselves,” Friedrich Merz, whose Christian Democratic Union/Christian Social Union party won last month’s German elections, wrote on X, as he spoke in support of a sharp increase in Europe’s defense capabilities.

“There can only be peace in Europe if we are strong.”

Germany’s most likely next chancellor was not at Thursday’s summit but was in Brussels to meet with European officials.

The country’s outgoing chancellor, Olaf Scholz, told the summit his country was rapidly boosting its defense capabilities and called on all of Europe to do the same.

“It is very important that we ensure that Ukraine does not have to accept a dictated peace, but that there will be a fair and just peace that ensures the sovereignty and independence of Ukraine,” he told reporters as he arrived at the summit.

Scholz said he also supported concrete proposals to bring a truce in the air and sea in Ukraine, as well as no further threats to the country’s infrastructure and a prisoner exchange that could “lay the foundation for a ceasefire.”

He also welcomed a plan from the EU to loosen regulations and make it easier for member states to borrow money for defense purposes.

However, Germany has warned against proposals from Ukraine and its Eastern European neighbors to seize some $227 billion in frozen Russian central bank reserves that have been held in the European financial system since the start of the war three years ago.

France

France could use its considerable nuclear arsenal as a deterrent to protect Europe from Russian threats, President Emmanuel Macron has said.

Paris controls the fourth-largest nuclear arsenal in the world, with an estimated 290 warheads, according to the Federation of American Scientists.

Only the UK and France have so far said they are willing to send troops to Ukraine, while the two countries have also proposed a peace deal, which has been rejected by Russia.

Macron has been one of the most outspoken critics of President Trump’s approach to Ukraine in recent days, following last Friday’s explosive fallout during a meeting with President Volodymyr Zelensky at the Oval Office that ended in a shouting match.

The French will provide military intelligence to Ukraine after the US announced a freeze on sharing information with Kyiv.

“Our intelligence is sovereign. We have intelligence that we allow Ukraine to benefit from,” French Defense Minister Sebastien Lecornu said.

France will “accelerate the various French aid packages” in the wake of the US suspension of aid to Ukraine, he added.

Russia was dubbed a “threat” to Europe in Macron’s address to the French people on Wednesday night, triggering a furious response from Moscow on Thursday.

“One can conclude that France thinks more about war, about continuing the war,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told journalists, adding that Macron’s speech was “extremely confrontational.”

However, France has joined with Germany in expressing a reluctance to seize frozen Russian financial reserves, as called for by Ukraine.

United Kingdom

British Prime Minister Keir Starmer is not in Brussels at the summit, as Britain is no longer a member of the European Union.

However, he has insisted the US remains an essential ally, pushing back against suggestions that the UK must pick a side between Europe and the United States.

He is working “to get the US, Ukraine and European allies onto the same page so that we can all focus on what matters most, which is lasting peace in Ukraine,” he told reporters on Thursday, repeating his calls for a ceasefire backed by a security guarantee.

“That guarantee needs a European element, and of course the United Kingdom will step up, we always step up in the cause of peace. But we also need the US to be working with us on that, and that is what I am focusing all my attention on,” he said.

Hungary

Hungary has been one of the most hostile countries toward Ukraine since the start of the war, and Prime Minister Viktor Orban may be left out of the summit’s conclusions on Ukraine.

He was expected to be onside with the general proposals on ramping up European defense spending, sources at the summit told Politico.

If Hungary doesn’t sign up to the summit’s Ukraine proposal, it could mean the language in the joint text is made far stronger, even calling for Ukraine’s entry into the European Union, officials said.

Baltic nations

Many countries that border Russia have been the most hardline in calling for increased defense spending.

France’s bold proposal to let its nuclear deterrent be used to protect Europe from Russian threats was welcomed by the Baltic nations.

A “very interesting idea,” was how Lithuania’s President Gitanas Nauseda described the plan.

“We have high expectations because a nuclear umbrella would serve as a really very serious deterrence towards Russia,” he told reporters at the summit.

The French nuclear proposal is “an opportunity to discuss,” Latvia’s Prime Minister Evika Silina said, although she stressed that more time was needed for talks.

Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania are all EU members — and called for Ukraine to join the bloc as well as a priority.

“Ukraine’s accession to the EU is an important security guarantee for the future of Ukraine,” the Lithuanian delegation said, calling for Ukraine to join by “no later than 2030,” according to officials.