EU raises €90B to keep Ukraine in the fight

Contributing sentiments towards policy:

60% : Over the weekend, Zelenskyy had hinted he would be ready to put his country's NATO accession on ice, provided he received robust security guarantees from his European and American counterparts.
59% : ** AGENDA -- EU ambassadors meet in Coreper II at 2:30 p.m. -- Deputy ambassadors meet in Coreper I at 9 a.m. -- Virtual G7 finance ministers' meeting.
58% : -- Mediterranean Commissioner Dubravka Šuica presents the Pact for the Mediterranean to the EU and southern neighborhood countries' ambassadors to Croatia in Zagreb.
58% : Celebrating Saturday: MEPs Morten Løkkegaard and Claudiu Manda; President of the Court of Justice of the EU Koen Lenaerts; Virgilio Falco, chair of the Assembly of the National Youth Council of Italy; SMEUnited's Véronique Willems; UiT's Eva van der Marel; European Commission's Irene Cafagna; former European Parliament President Martin Schulz; European Parliament's Luana Franchini; Tsvetelina Kalcheva, from the U.K. Mission to the EU; NNGG España's Carlo Angrisano; Connect Europe's Benedict William Gromann; Corriere della Sera's Marilisa Palumbo.
58% : Playbook editors Alex Spence and James Panichi, reporter Ferdinand Knapp and producer Hugh Kapernaros. SUBSCRIBE to the POLITICO newsletter family: Brussels Playbook | London Playbook | London Playbook PM | Playbook Paris | EU Election Playbook | Berlin Playbook | Global Playbook | POLITICO Confidential | Sunday Crunch
57% : Spare a thought: The Commission had already dispatched a photographer to Brazil to capture the planned signing, per an EU official.
56% : This is Nick Vinocur. DRIVING THE DAY EU PIVOTS ON UKRAINE FUNDS:
56% : The EU has been waiting for 25 years to sign a major trade deal with South America.
56% : In its flagship report, our POLITICO Research & Analysis Division takes a deep-dive into the European Commission's growing reliance on omnibus packages and how it reshapes EU policymaking, governance, and regulatory scope.
56% : | EU Influence | London Influence | Berlin Bulletin |
54% : Meloni on Line 1: The tie-breaking vote came down to Meloni, given trade deals need only to be approved by a qualified majority of EU states.
52% : How it's playing in Moscow: Kirill Dmitriev, the head of Russia's sovereign wealth fund, posted on X that the EU's pivot is a "major win for LAW + common sense -- and for the voices of reason in Europe.
51% : How it happened: The reparations loan unraveled shortly after 10 p.m., when a two-page legal document addressing Belgium's concerns about the loan was circulated among leaders, per an EU diplomat.
50% : The new deal: With the assets plan off the table, 24 of the 27 EU countries will now move ahead with plans to jointly raise €90 billion in zero-interest loans to keep Ukraine financially afloat over the next two years.
49% : Several leaders, including Merz, had also touted the importance of striking a deal on Mercosur, a major EU trade deal with South America.
48% : " Spreading the load: Speaking to Playbook, an EU diplomat argued that the deal's upside was the divvying up of the financial burden for supporting Ukraine more evenly among European states and strengthening Kyiv's hand in ongoing peace talks.
45% : Tractor math: Some 7,300 protesters and 50 tractors joined the official protest -- but police counted a total of 950 tractors in the EU district.
44% : In the end, the Flemish nationalist "basically got everything he wanted," as one EU diplomat put it after the summit broke up in the early hours.
43% : The delay derails Commission President Ursula von der Leyen's plan to fly to Brazil on Saturday to sign the deal, which several countries had cast as a major geopolitical play to diversify the EU's trade relationships and offset Donald Trump's trade tariffs.
39% : After 17 hours of talks, European Union leaders struck a deal to jointly raise €90 billion for Ukraine but moved away from plans to use Russia's frozen assets for Kyiv, dealing a setback to German Chancellor Friedrich Merz and other leaders who had backed that solution.
39% : A massive farmers' protest wreaked havoc in the streets around the EU institutions Thursday.
37% : CHAOS IN THE EU DISTRICT:
31% : " Beating the EU machine: De Wever held out for more than two months and, even as late as Thursday afternoon, many EU governments believed he'd back down, POLITICO's Zoya Sheftalovich reports.
30% : " New Plan B: EU leaders refused to take the reparations loan off the table, however.

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