Hungary Vetoes EU Eurobond ‘Plan B’ for Ukraine Financing

Major-power asset seizures are hardly new: after Iran’s 1979 revolution Washington froze about $12 billion, sparking decades of litigation, while post-World-War-I Allied reparations demands on Germany (1921 London Schedule) eventually destabilised Weimar finances. The EU debate reprises that tension between punishment, legal norms, and financial stability. Hungary’s veto reveals a deeper fault line: an integration project built on unanimity for fiscal solidarity collides with national political capital, echoing the 2010–12 euro-crisis quarrels over Eurobond mutualisation. Over a century horizon, whether the EU crosses the Rubicon of expropriating sovereign reserves may matter more than the immediate €165 billion: it would set a precedent eroding state-asset immunity that underpins the dollar-euro system. If investors conclude great-power reserves can be politically reallocated, the long-run architecture of global safe assets—and by extension European strategic autonomy—could shift in ways far harder to reverse than a single year’s funding gap in Kyiv.