EU Scrambles to Win Belgium’s Nod for €90 bn Ukraine ‘Reparations Loan’ Backed by Frozen Russian Assets

Confiscating an enemy’s state reserves mid-war echoes the Allies’ 1917 seizure of German merchant tonnage and the 1946 liquidation of Japanese assets, both of which spawned decades of claims and countersuits. Today’s tussle exposes two structural currents: the weaponisation of financial infrastructure as a tool of coercion, and Europe’s search for strategic autonomy as US security guarantees fray. If the EU overrules Belgium it will mark the first large-scale use of immobilised central-bank reserves to bankroll a victim during an ongoing conflict, setting a template that could prompt reserve-holding states—from Saudi Arabia to China—to reroute savings away from Western custodians. Conversely, a collapse of the plan would underscore the limits of EU cohesion and accelerate the trend toward transactional, nationally hedged finance that has gathered pace since the 2008 crisis and Russia-China de-dollarisation efforts. Either outcome will ripple through the next century’s monetary architecture more than through the immediate battlefield in Ukraine.