Belgium and Euroclear Imperil EU Scheme to Underwrite €183 B Ukraine Loan With Frozen Russian Reserves

Major powers have frozen adversaries’ assets before—Washington seized $130 m of Japanese funds in July 1941 and Tehran’s $7 bn in 1979—but outright confiscation has almost always been walked back or litigated for decades (the 1917 repudiation of Tsarist bonds still haunts French courts). Brussels is now testing whether a post-Bretton-Woods reserve currency bloc can convert immobilised sovereign money into war finance without shredding its own legal order. The resistance from Belgium and Euroclear underscores a deeper, 30-year trend: the politicisation of payment plumbing that began with 9/11 sanctions and accelerated after the 2014 SWIFT cut-offs. If the EU forces confiscation, investors from the Gulf to Beijing—already building alternatives like CIPS and gold clearing—may conclude that euro assets carry unpriced political risk, eroding the currency’s status over the coming half-century. Conversely, if the plan collapses, Ukraine’s funding gap could expose the limits of Western financial statecraft. Either way, this skirmish will be a case study in how hard-power conflict now plays out through the balance sheets of global custodians—a dynamic likely to shape the next century of international finance.