BERLIN, December 18. /TASS/. The European Central Bank (ECB) will not guarantee the loan mechanism for Ukraine if it leads to breaching EU legislation, ECB President Christine Lagarde said at the press conference in Berlin.
"We are an area of the world which praises itself for respecting the rule of law," Lagarde noted. "I’m sure that there are solutions that can be debated and discussed, and ... constructions that can be elaborated, but it’s not for the central bank to actually encourage support a mechanism under which we would be called upon — and scheduled - to breach Article 123 of the Treaty," she stressed,
Article 123 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union prevents the ECB from printing money explicitly to finance government spending. This what the EU loan to Ukraine would represent.
"You cannot expect me to validate a mechanism under which there would be monetary financing," Lagarde stressed. "This is pretty obvious," she added.
The EU summit is underway now in Brussels, where the issue of funding Ukraine on account of immobilized Russian assets is to be discussed.