Merz urges more EU aid for Ukraine as Brussels summit opens with Le Pen warning

Merz presses for more money

Chancellor Friedrich Merz used the opening of the EU summit in Brussels on Thursday, 15 October, to call for a further increase in support for Ukraine. He said he had made the case in several smaller meetings that morning, with the aim of helping Ukraine through the winter and into next year. Merz gave no concrete figure and did not name an amount.

We will have to top up the funds here again in order to truly help Ukraine on a lasting basis.

Merz also pointed to his visit to Kyiv on 4 October, where he met Volodymyr Zelensky. He described what he saw there as an increasingly ruthless wave of Russian attacks, and argued that Russia is putting pressure on Europe's political order in every respect.

Zelensky's schedule in Brussels

Zelensky said he had already arrived in Brussels on Thursday and had planned a series of meetings he described as important. Those include talks with NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte, French President Emmanuel Macron and the prime ministers of Poland, Denmark and Belgium. On Friday, 16 October, he is due to meet EU leaders as well as the heads of government of Hungary, Finland and Sweden, and Ukraine support is on that day's summit agenda. He did not mention a meeting with Merz. Polish prime minister Donald Tusk, after talks with European leaders in Brussels, wrote on X that Ukraine was not alone.

Frozen Russian assets and the funding gap

Merz rejected moving part of the roughly 210 billion euros in Russian assets frozen in the EU to the United States, where it could be used as leverage in peace negotiations. He said the assets should stay in Europe and that the decision was a European matter. The Financial Times had reported that the idea was raised at a meeting of government representatives from the United States, Ukraine and Europe in Miami, with Germany, the United Kingdom and France taking part.

Ukraine's finance minister Serhij Martschenko said during a visit to Brussels in September that next year's regular budget was short by 32.6 billion US dollars (29.1 billion euros). He put the defence spending gap at 45 billion US dollars (40.1 billion euros). Funding for the current year is secured, according to the reporting.

Le Pen's conditional pledge

Far-right French politician Marine Le Pen said in Brussels on Wednesday, 14 October, that if she won an election she would end French aid to Ukraine after six months. She tied the decision to the state of France's budget, saying the country no longer had the money for such support. Spiegel Online quoted her as saying she was not trying to surprise anyone, and that it would be honest to tell Zelensky that France could no longer afford this financial aid. Her statement adds a wider risk, since the articles note that EU support for Ukraine and the medium-term EU budget could come under serious strain if eurosceptic candidates win elections in several member states next year.

Competitiveness and the EU budget

Merz linked the EU budget to progress on cutting bureaucracy. At the start of the EU Council on Thursday he named competitiveness and defence as the priorities, but said progress had fallen short of what he had expected at the beginning of the year. He said the bloc was far behind the timetable it had set itself in spring. Those goals were set at a February retreat at Schloss Alden Biesen in Belgium, where leaders discussed weaker competitiveness, internal market barriers and dependence on third countries, with reports from Mario Draghi and Enrico Letta feeding into the talks. Merz wants the issue to become a standing item on every EU summit agenda so that gaps can be spotted early. António Costa, the European Council president, said on the sidelines that political ambitions must turn into "concrete outcomes".