He didn’t.
“He basically got everything he wanted,” one EU diplomat said after the summit broke up in the early hours of Friday morning.
Based on conversations with 23 EU officials, diplomats and politicians, nearly all of whom were granted anonymity so they could describe in detail the events of recent weeks, this is the story of how he did it.
Berlin to Brussels
It started during a mild night in October. That was the last time EU leaders met, and when they initially hoped they’d get a deal to take the unprecedented step of using Russian assets to give Ukraine financial support. The EU has got used to leaders like Hungary’s Viktor Orbán throwing their weight around but, suddenly, the 54-year-old De Wever became the latest to break rank.
When leaders left that gathering shame-faced and empty-handed after promising Volodymyr Zelenskyy they were ready to send Kyiv billions of euros, they swore all they needed was two more months to win the Belgian over. Instead, as more time went on, more leaders took his side. What started to emerge was a populist bloc.
After near-daily meetings of EU ambassadors, dozens of phone calls, diplomacy dashes from Berlin to Brussels and amid a brutal Russian onslaught on Ukraine’s energy infrastructure and civilian targets, two rival camps were still pulling in opposite directions by the morning of the summit on Thursday.