Winners and losers of EU’s make-or-break Ukraine summit

 

Winners and losers of EU’s make-or-break Ukraine summit

 

Ukraine finally got its money after a 16-hour meeting of EU leaders, but not everyone was victorious.

 

December 19, 2025 12:15 pm CET

By Gerardo Fortuna

https://www.politico.eu/article/bart-de-wever-giorgia-meloni-antonio-costa-winners-and-losers-of-eu-ukraine-summit/

 

BRUSSELS — Europe is used to last-minute plot twists at summits, but this one raised the bar.

 

After a marathon summit, leaders agreed on a plan to provide funding for Ukraine based on EU joint debt, although three countries refused to sign up. That wasn’t the plan most EU countries had been pushing for, which was to use frozen Russian assets to help Kyiv’s war effort.

 

Here’s who won, and who lost, at this crunch summit for Europe.

 Winners

Bart De Wever

The Belgian prime minister delivered a masterclass in stoic resistance against using Russian assets, a plan he had opposed since its inception. For most of the time, he was the lone holdout to the plan, until Italy and a few others voiced doubts late in the day.

 

His key tactic? After weeks of resistance to using frozen assets, which he said would have massively exposed his country to potential Russian retaliation, De Wever’s team showed up willing to negotiate all day with European Commission officials, only to put forward a demand calling for “uncapped” support from other EU countries.

 

That proved too much to stomach and made Plan B — joint borrowing — the only option (one that few wanted but most could live with).

 

Giorgia Meloni

The real kingmaker of the summit, the Italian prime minister dictated the pace on the EU-Mercosur trade deal and also timed her intervention on Ukraine funding perfectly.

 

After weeks of staying in the shadows — with Belgium fighting the battle against using frozen Russian assets — Meloni let others exhaust their options before stepping in with a gentle nudge late at night, once the reparation loan plan was already dead.

 

EU diplomats told POLITICO that Meloni didn’t even take the floor to speak during the first part of the summit, but she closed the deal.

 

António Costa

If finding a deal was hard, finding one in a single day bordered on the inconceivable.

 

Yet that has always been Costa’s goal: keeping EU summits down to just one day. While most leaders were already assuming a second day — or even going into the weekend — Costa got it wrapped up.

 

He never fully committed to any single option (contrary to his counterpart at the Berlaymont), floated above the fray, and still got a deal.

 

Everyone involved in the war

As strange as it sounds — since war, and this one in particular, produces no real winners — every major actor involved in the Ukraine war walked away with something.

 

Volodymyr Zelenskyy got the money he needed, which is what mattered most. Europe delivered on its promise to support Ukraine. Vladimir Putin’s frozen assets won’t be used against him. And Donald Trump still has the option of using those assets as leverage in a future peace deal.

 

Losers

Friedrich Merz

It’s hard to recall a more unsuccessful EU summit for a German chancellor.

 

Within hours, Merz suffered two major defeats: the postponement of the Mercosur deal and, more decisively, the torpedoing of the frozen-assets plan that he had aggressively pushed.

 

For weeks, Germany and its Nordic allies had insisted that frozen assets were the only game in town, arguing that joint debt was impossible due to it needing unanimity requirements and Hungary’s veto.

 

The outcome proved otherwise: joint debt and three countries opting out. A reminder that in Brussels, impossible often just means there’s not yet any political will.

 

Merz put his neck on the line, traveling to Brussels to help Ursula von der Leyen lobby De Wever, as well as writing several op-eds on how good it would be to use frozen assets. The fact that reparation loans haven’t been formally ruled out — technical work will continue — is cold comfort.

 

Ursula von der Leyen

The Commission president went down alongside Merz in the effort to keep joint borrowing off the table, even though her own team had prepared alternative options.

 

She eventually opened the door to joint debt in a speech in Strasbourg on Wednesday — but it was far too late to claim credit for the deal that was eventually struck. By then, the momentum had already shifted, and others were steering the outcome.

 

Mette Frederiksen (and the Nordics)

Denmark’s prime minister stayed largely out of what was framed as a German-led fight, but Frederiksen, whose country holds the rotating presidency of the Council of the EU — and the broader Nordic bloc — quietly backed the “only game in town” narrative.

 

What resurfaced was a familiar fault line: frugals versus joint debt, this time refracted through a dispute over how to use frozen Russian assets.

 

In the end, one camp clearly prevailed. Leaders agreed to move toward joint borrowing to cover Ukraine’s financial needs for the next two years, sidelining alternative schemes that had dominated the debate for weeks.

 

Hungary, Slovakia and Czechia

The trio secured a short-term — and largely financial — win by avoiding direct obligations to send money to Ukraine.

 

But the victory may prove costly. The money will flow regardless — and a move like this pushes them closer to pariah status inside the EU. Will there be repercussions from the rest of the EU? Time will tell.