Follow this authorLee Hockstader's opinions
FollowLittle of the E.U. money will be spent on long-term reconstruction; more will go to pay salaries for teachers and soldiers, manufacture arms munitions, and patch up missile-blasted port and electrical facilities.
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And this winter, it’s a safe bet that Putin, who has shifted the Russian economy to a war footing, devoting a third of government spending to the military, will continue to blow up Ukraine’s critical facilities as fast as Kyiv can repair them.
What’s more, most of the E.U. funds will be dispensed as loans, not grants, meaning Kyiv will be expected to repay them at some point. That’s hardly realistic for the foreseeable future, but it’s what the politicians and bureaucrats in Brussels could manage.
That goes to the underlying problem: Europe, like the United States, pays constant lip service to the fact that Ukraine is fighting not just for its own survival but also to defend the rules-based international order. Yet measured against those very high stakes, and against its own enormous resources, the E.U.’s financial commitment is meager.
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Granted, Europe is a model of prudence compared with the United States. In Washington, funding for Ukraine has dried up completely, owing to a handful of right-wing Republican lawmakers in thrall to Donald Trump, who is no friend of Ukraine’s. The dysfunction on Capitol Hill is an appalling blow to American prestige and self-interest.
Yet by various measures, the E.U.’s commitment is inadequate to the challenge, and paltry when measured against the continent’s resources.
Europe is rich. The bloc’s 27 nations collectively represent one-sixth of the world’s economy; collectively, the E.U.’s economic output is nearly the size of China’s. During the pandemic, it approved $800 billion in relief funds for member states. About a quarter of that was earmarked to Italy, which is the world’s eighth-largest economy.
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If the E.U. can mete out more than $200 billion for Italy, which, despite chronic growth problems, is prosperous and at peace, it is fair to ask why it can muster just........