Prime Minister Bart De Wever’s address to the Belgian parliament this morning

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Prime Minister Bart De Wever’s address to the Belgian parliament this morning

As I noted yesterday on the basis of news in the Belgian daily ‘Le Soir,’ early this morning Prime Minister Bart De Wever convened a session of the Belgian parliament (Chamber of Representatives) to deliver a speech about his planned actions later in the day at the European Council meeting of heads of government and state of the 27 EU Member States when they discuss the proposal of European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen to free the 185 billion euros in frozen Russian assets held in Euroclear (Belgium) to be used as collateral for a massive ‘reparations loan’ to Ukraine.

Here below is the link to this session. Regrettably there is not yet a version available on the internet with English translation.  As you will find, De Wever opens with a few words in French and then switches to Flemish (Dutch) for the remainder of his speech.  Nonetheless, in the Q&A with deputies which follows some of the questions are from French-speaking deputies and De Wever answers each one in French. I refer you to minute 21 and minute 33 and following, for example.  He also weaves into his speech and into his answers English turns of speech. 

I call attention to his statements in French which I could pick up and which are highly relevant to anyone who wants to understand how and why he dares to go up against the majority of EU Members and still more courageously against the authoritarian and vengeful Frau von der Leyen as he is doing.  De Wever says that he has backers for his opposition to the notion of seizing the Russian assets among other European leaders, in particular Italy, Malta and Bulgaria, as well as several others which are still unnamed, and on this basis he assures the deputies that Belgium does not stand alone, that it is not isolated. These countries agree that the proposed ‘reparations loan’ is, as he says here in English: ‘sailing in uncharted waters.”   The countries siding with Belgium have told him that if the Russian assets were being held in their countries as they are now in Euroclear (Belgium) they would act precisely as De Wever is doing.

De Wever insists that the Member States consider instead issuing an EU guarantee for any loans to be extended to Ukraine directly, not using Russian assets, per what von der Leyen called ‘Plan B’ a couple of weeks ago.  This would be less expensive and less risky, he says.

Clever words! Of course, he knows perfectly well that Germany, The Netherlands and several Nordic countries are stingy and will resist strongly any attempt to draw them into mutualizing a loan to Ukraine.

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Gilbert Doctorow's latest book, "War Diaries. The Russia-Ukraine War, 2022-2023" is a unique contribution to literature on the war thanks to the author's reports on the Russian home front written during his periodic visits to St Petersburg at a time when Russia no longer issued visas and nearly all Western journalists had left the country. Doctorow's two-volume "Memoirs of a Russianist" published in 2020 also constitutes a category of its own, consisting largely of diary entries rather than reminiscences written decades later.. Volume 2 focuses on the community of 50,000 expatriate managers working and living in Moscow during the 1990s, about which none of his peers has yet to write. Gilbert Doctorow is a professional Russia watcher and actor in Russian affairs going back to 1965. He is a magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College (1967), a past Fulbright scholar, and holder of a Ph.D. with honors in history from Columbia University (1975). After completing his studies, Mr. Doctorow pursued a business career focused on the USSR and Eastern Europe. For twenty-five years he worked for US and European multinationals in marketing and general management with regional responsibility. From 1998-2002, Doctorow served as the Chairman of the Russian Booker Literary Prize in Moscow. During the 2010-2011 academic year, he was a Visiting scholar of the Harriman Institute, Columbia University. Mr. Doctorow is a long-time resident of Brussels.

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