European Commission expects EU member states to honor obligation to provide Kiev with 90 bln euro aid - spokesperson

BRUSSELS. Feb 24 (Interfax) - The European Commission (EU) has so far stuck to its proposal to allocate 90 billion euro in financial assistance for Ukraine in 2026-2027 using loans, as was decided by the European Council, EC spokesperson Paola Pinho said.

"We are working on making sure that all the leaders honor their commitments, as has been committed at the Council in December last year," Pinho told a briefing in Brussels on Tuesday.

She was responding to a question about whether the EC had a Plan B for providing Ukraine aid in lieu of a currently blocked option, and whether Brussels intended to revisit the issue of using frozen Russian assets, as EU diplomacy chief Kaja Kallas suggested yesterday.

Pinho was also asked whether the Council's legislative decision-making rule, requiring the unanimous approval by all 27 members, was consistent with the present circumstances where one member, as Hungary does, wants to block collective intentions.

"We know the challenges of unanimity and we have been working with these challenges, I would say, to a very large extent successfully for many, many years. And these are the rules of the treaty, so we continue to follow those rules. We continue to put a lot of effort in making sure that we have the support of all member states," Pinho said.

The EC had previously had to solve Ukraine-related issues and managed to secure the support of 27 members 19 times in "extremely challenging conditions," she said. "And yet we have been delivering, and we are confident we will deliver again," Pinho said.

The EU should hurry up with allocating the 90-billion-euro loan for Kiev that was blocked by Hungary earlier, Kallas told a press conference after a Foreign Affairs Council meeting on February 23. The EU should move more quickly with that initiative because Ukraine needs this aid, Kallas said. If that fails, the EU can always revert to the frozen assets option, she said.

The EU will continue working on the 20th package of restrictive anti-Russia measures blocked by Hungary and Slovakia, Kallas said.