Of nine billion euros promised to avert Kiev’s bankruptcy, only one billion remains. In Brussels, the risk of default on these loans was far too low: instead of the expected EUR 810 million, guarantees of EUR 6.3 billion are now required.
On May 24, in front of the assembled global elite at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Ursula von der Leyen brimmed with confidence: “We will do everything we can to help the Ukrainians win,” said the President of the European Commission. “We have proposed more than EUR 10 billion in macro-financial assistance, the largest package of its kind ever designed by the EU for a third country.”
But what von der Leyen didn’t know or didn’t want to know at the time: these numbers weren’t worth the paper they were written on. Your cabinet had miscalculated twice.
First, with the assumption that the new nine billion euros that should come to the already agreed 1.2 billion euros would also only have to be secured against default with a guarantee of nine percent of the total amount.