Gregorio Sorgi
EU approves €50B Ukraine aid as Viktor Orbán folds
European Union leaders on Thursday reached a deal to provide €50 billion in aid to Ukraine — and the...
8 months ago
Poland edges closer to unblocking frozen EU funds
BRUSSELS / WARSAW ― Poland is confident it can unblock over €100 billion of frozen EU funds. The que...
8 months ago
EU confident of Orbán U-turn on allowing money to Ukraine
BRUSSELS ― Budapest has signaled to the EU that it is ready to lift its opposition to funding Ukrain...
8 months ago
Orbán’s Ukraine compromise would allow him to hold EU to ransom every year
BRUSSELS ― Hungary has signaled it could end its opposition to using the EU budget to send money to...
8 months ago
EU floats radical change to how it funds poorer members
BRUSSELS ― Countries may soon have to meet targets in return for their share of a large part of the EU budget under far-reaching plans drawn up by the European Commission.Until now, the bulk of so-called cohesion funding, which was worth €392 billion over...
6 months ago
Hand over ‘missing’ €5B in Russian asset profits, Ukraine tells EU
BRUSSELS — Ukraine is pushing for another €5 billion from the proceeds generated by frozen Russian assets that the EU has decided to withhold from the war-ravaged nation.Euroclear, the body holding the vast majority of Russia's central bank assets in Euro...
6 months ago
Risk of ‘lost decade’ as EU countries face economic cliff edge
BRUSSELS — The year 2026 could be a defining moment for the European economy.The double blow of the introduction of reformed EU spending rules and the European Commission turning off the money taps may leave a black hole in the budgets of highly indebted...
6 months ago
Von der Leyen dilutes plan to use Russian assets to buy Ukraine arms
BRUSSELS — European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen has tempered her plan to use the proceeds of frozen Russian assets to buy weapons for Ukraine.The EU executive will propose on Wednesday that a fraction of the approximately €3 billion derived...
6 months ago
Von der Leyen’s Ukraine ammo plan is facing resistance
A handful of governments have opposed European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen’s plan to use profits generated by frozen Russian assets to buy weapons for Ukraine.Hungary, Slovakia, Malta and Luxembourg pushed back against the idea during a meet...
6 months ago
Western allies split over how to make Putin pay
BRUSSELS — America and Europe can’t agree over how far they should go in forcing Russia to pay to rebuild Ukraine. One suggestion, not so long ago dismissed on both sides of the Atlantic as pie in the sky, is now gaining serious momentum — and causing ser...
6 months ago
Russia’s friends beg EU to leave frozen assets alone
BRUSSELS — Countries sympathetic to Russia are demanding the EU drop any notion it might have about a wholesale confiscation of Moscow's state assets.Representatives of China, Saudi Arabia and Indonesia are privately pushing the EU to continue resisting p...
6 months ago
€500B remains unspent from EU’s Covid recovery fund
BRUSSELS — Governments have received less than a third of the EU's original €723 billion pot to help boost post-Covid economic recovery and are now heaping pressure on the European Commission to speed up payments.Countries are demanding the Commission sla...
6 months ago
EU signals end of free money for poorer countries
BRUSSELS — The European Commission is siding with a German-led group of fiscally conservative governments by resisting demands to finance spending through more borrowing — on top of a push to add conditions to the hundreds of billions of euros it gives th...
6 months ago
Greedy Belgian taxman should keep hands off Russian assets, West tells Brussels
BRUSSELS — As if Belgium’s tax authorities don’t get enough flak already, the country has now irked leading international governments which accuse it of creaming €1.7 billion from the proceeds generated by frozen Russian assets. Western allies are critica...
5 months ago