European leaders have several fierce battles ahead of them, but maybe none of them will be as difficult to solve as the crucial issue of financing Ukraine.
As Washington shows less and less willingness to pay the costs (let’s face it, the U.S. is mostly only ready to sell the necessary equipment so Kyiv can keep fighting) and would be rather happy to simply finish the war regardless of how much territory Ukraine should give up or how long peace would last – Europe needs to bear more of the burden.
The more so as European leaders look far less eager to finish the war – maybe fearing the consequences of having told their populations for years how they would never sign a peace treaty with Russia as long as President Putin is in charge.
Thus, the only option left is to finance Ukraine for the (countless) years to come.
Alas, it is not as easy as it sounds.
First and foremost because EU members themselves are not on the same page on who and how should gather the necessary funds.
Right now, it seems that Europe has only two options on the table.
Option A is touse frozen Russian assets as the foundations for a large “reparations/loan” package — widely reported target numbers are around €140 billion. Much of the relevant frozen stock of Russian reserves is immobilized in Belgium via Euroclear.
The idea is attractive because it points to a very large pool of resources — but it is legally, financially and geopolitically complex.
Option B is to ask worried member states to buy into a new shared bond while they check their debt-to-anxiety ratios.
Both present virtues.
Option ‘A’ “smells” of legal originality. Unfortunately, Belgium, the country that “owns” most of those Russian assets is not happy about the option. Their worries about this solution (that, translated to everyday English sounds somewhat like “let’s spend the money together and if later Russian wins against us in court, you pay it back alone”) are not quite baseless.
Option ‘B’ generates panic and strained coffee machines in finance ministries, especial in France where public debt is already beyond control.
Fortunately — and this is the delicious bit — this is not the first time in the European history when a group of countries has limited possibilities to borrow money from the market to finance reconstruction.
What if Europe simply reached back into its wardrobe of postwar nostalgia and pulled out a relic Central and Eastern European solution?
After WWII, many Central and Eastern European governments — especially where Marshall Plan funds were absent — ran mass state-loan drives framed in patriotic or solidarity language. Governments used such loan campaigns to mobilize household savings for reconstruction, industrialization and budget needs. In several cases the campaigns included prize/lottery elements, payroll deductions or workplace quotas, beyond the heavy political mobilization, of course. Then, of course, in practice ‘voluntary’ often slid into strong social pressure or semi-compulsion.
This practice was widespread across the Eastern side of the Iron Curtain.
In Hungary, the program, dubbed “Peace Loan” existed between 1949–1955. During this period, the state organized multiple rounds of “subscription” and managed to raise large sums, incentivized with workplace quotas and propaganda. To put it simple, campaigns put enormous pressures on households to tap their earnings.
In Poland, it was called Premium Loan for National Reconstruction in 1946: a reconstruction loan with premium/lottery features. In Czechoslovakia, programs for State loans ran between 1946–1951. The postwar state bonds issued to the population for reconstruction and budget financing. Strong propaganda supported similar procedures in Bulgaria, Romania and in the Soviet Union.
The main reason was always the same. Capitals were in desperate need for money for reconstruction and post war rebuilding yet had severely limited options to source it from the free market. Hence, populations were made to pay. After all, it sounds much better if you contribute to an investment to the future than, let’s say it, you are told to finance the next shipment of arms.
Picture the branding of this program in 2025 and 2026, in EU edition. Tasteful posters, minimalist ads with picturesque slow-motion videos of children holding paper birds, and an app where citizens can choose a tier. Let’s say Bronze Solidarity (€50), Silver Courage (€200), Gold Patriot (€500). The program would also have a bureaucratic leaflet in 23 languages, and a noble civic ritual in which citizens can voluntarily hand over their hard-earned euros to an institution whose job it is to make the logistics of war funding.
Who wouldn’t love it? It has everything a modern polity could ask for. A message easily formulated as patriotic or anti-Russian (depending on the target audience). A sticker for your lapel or special LinkedIn badge that looks good on your resume. Payroll or tax deduction options for the busy professionals.
It could even turn into a mini-competition between the states. Even the smallest ones (think Baltics that are the fiercest warriors in negotiation rooms, yet obviously lack the resources to provide serious military contribution could significantly help Ukraine’s reconstruction.
European leaders could also lead with good example and buy such bonds.
Mathematically, the program could raise the necessary €140 billion, if only every single person contributed a few hundred euros.
The 450 million EU citizens (totaling 520 million along with their fellow UK patriots), would need to spend only 270 EUR per person. Of course, the Ukrainian state should guarantee the payback or the profit or they can use the old Soviet method, add the lottery segments and choose thousand people every year who get triple profits, while the others still can feel themselves proud as they spent their money well.
This is, obviously, only a mental game (though this system worked, so maybe would work again, in a modern version with delightful caveats and GDPR notes, legal memos, 127 footnotes, and a working group to plan the working group that will later plan the marketing).
But it could prove how seriously the supporters of prolonging the war at any cost mean their business with a national subscription drive (a transparent voluntary mass subscription) – or whether they are eager only as long as somebody else pays the bills.
And would burden Europe’s already crumbling budgets and assets far less than, for example, joint bonds would do.
It would also be a great tool to see how much (more) European citizens are willing to spend in support of Ukraine.
That said — and here the satire bends toward sincerity — if the point of such a theatrical exercise is to reveal how much ordinary citizens actually want to spend on geopolitics when the choice is squarely theirs, then the peace-loan works as an elegant thought experiment: a civic mirror held up to public appetite. It would be a better test than polls.
