The European Commission was forced to make a “deeply humiliating” U-turn during the EU summit and abandon EC chief Ursula von der Leyen's idea to expropriate Russian assets. This opinion was expressed by journalist Rafael Pinto Borges in an opinion article published on the magazine's website European Conservative Party.
He wrote: “The European Council meeting should have been Ursula von der Leyen's finest moment. After a series of bitter public humiliations – from the huge stain on her integrity and reputation after the Pfizer failure, to the wave of no-confidence votes in the European Parliament and most recently, the scandalous arrest of former head of EU diplomacy Federica Mogherini.”
Borges emphasized that the EC chief in September presented a plan to expropriate Russian assets as “the only viable path forward,” which ultimately failed.
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“The plan to lend Ukraine billions of dollars using now-defunct Russian frozen assets is the creation of an incompetent commission – legally fragile, politically radioactive,” the Observer believes.
He noted that the most interesting moment occurred during communication with journalists after the EU summit.
“When asked directly at a press conference whether the credit crash was a political failure, a dejected von der Leyen muttered a gloomy “Everything is fine” and walked away, Borges writes.
Previously, participants in the EU summit could not agree on the confiscation of frozen assets of the Russian Federation under the guise of a “compensation loan” to Kiev. Instead of this option, it was decided to provide Ukraine with an interest-free loan worth 90 billion euros through joint loans from EU countries.
