The European Union is ready to give Ukraine 11 billion euros (USD 15 billion) in loans and grants over the coming years to help stabilize its economy, the head of the bloc's executive arm said today.
The aid comes on top of USD 1 billion in energy subsidies the United States pledged yesterday. It will help support Kiev while it negotiates a broad bailout program with the International Monetary Fund.
The EU package is "designed to assist a committed, inclusive and reforms-oriented government in rebuilding a stable and prosperous future for Ukraine," Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso said.
The aid will include 1.6 billion euros in loans and 1.4 billion euros in grants from the EU budget and at least 8 billion euros fresh credit from financial institutions run by or controlled by the EU and its member states, the European Investment Bank and the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development.
The package foresees helping to modernise Ukraine's gas transit system and providing technical assistance ranging from judicial reform to assistance in preparing elections, the Commission said. The package also calls for steps to accelerate achieving visa-free travel for Ukrainians to the 28-nation bloc.
That measure, if approved, would go down particularly badly in Moscow, since Russia has sought visa-free travel to Europe for its citizen for years. Suspending discussions on that project are among the measures EU leaders will consider at an emergency meeting Thursday to punish Russia over its occupation of Ukraine's Crimean Peninsula.
Coincidentally, the headline figure of USD 15 billion for the EU's aid package is the same amount that Russia was prepared to grant Ukraine in loans until the government of President Viktor Yanukovich was ousted last month.
Yanukovich took the Russian loans instead of a wide-ranging trade and economic agreement with the EU, a move that fuelled the protests that led to his ouster.
Barroso said that agreement was still on the table, and the EU is prepared to provisionally grant Ukraine the benefits deriving from it before a full ratification. Ukraine's industrial and agricultural exporters could save some 900 million euros annually through reduced tariffs, the Commission said.
"The situation in Ukraine is a test of our capability and resolve to stabilize our neighborhood and to provide new opportunities for many, not just a few," Barroso told reporters in Brussels. "We need to be up to this challenge.
