Europe's Glass Half-Full
A guest post by Hugo Dixon, one of the architects of the Ukraine reparation loan plan, on why he rates last week's EU deal as only 6 out of 10 - and why still holds out hope of getting to 10 out of 10
By Hugo Dixon
Simon Nixon has suggested I have been too negative on the European Union’s €90 billion loan to Ukraine. I gave it only 6 marks out of 10. I would have preferred to use the frozen Russian assets rather than EU borrowing to get cash to Kyiv. I am one of the architects of this “reparations loan” concept.
To be clear, I did not think the European Commission’s version of the reparations loan was the best one. I would have given it only 7 marks out of 10. Our group had a better alternative which might have avoided the problems the Commission ran into.
That said, here are my five reasons for rating the EU’s loan 6 out of 10 – which, by the way, is a glass that it more full than empty!
€90 billion is only enough to fund Kyiv for two years. While that is useful, the Russian assets in the EU could have financed Ukraine for four years. What’s more, there are other assets in the UK, Canada, Australia and other countries that would have been used in r…
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