Belgium has rejected the European Union's plan to use frozen Russian central-bank assets to finance Ukraine, euractiv.com reports. The scheme stalls — not because the other 26 member states disagree, but because it cannot proceed without Brussels's sign-off.

Decisions on sanctions and on how to treat frozen Russian state assets require unanimous approval in the Council of the EU, so any single government can block or delay them. Belgium is not just any government here: Euroclear, the Brussels-based securities depository under Belgian financial oversight, holds the bulk of the Russian central-bank reserves immobilized in the EU since 2022. That combination of unanimity and physical custody gives Belgium a lever the plan's other backers lack — it can withhold the legal and technical cooperation needed to touch the money, or simply withhold its vote.

Euractiv does not detail Belgium's stated legal or financial objections, nor what other member states plan to do next. Whether this is a final veto or a negotiating position ahead of a later Council meeting remains unclear.

Watch for whether the European Commission proposes a workaround that does not require Belgian consent — such as a loan structured around the assets' proceeds rather than the principal — and whether other capitals facing unanimity constraints elsewhere begin citing this veto as precedent.