More than 100 Members of the European Parliament have signed a letter urging EU leaders to urgently reopen talks on using frozen Russian sovereign assets to aid Ukraine. The letter was sent on Wednesday, 9 September, and addressed to European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, EU foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas, Economy Commissioner Valdis Dombrovskis, European Council President António Costa, and Irish Prime Minister Micheál Martin, whose country holds the rotating presidency of the Council of the EU.
According to various reports, 122–123 of the Parliament’s 720 members signed the document — lawmakers from the European People’s Party, Renew Europe, the Socialists and Democrats, the Greens, the European Conservatives and Reformists, and The Left. The initiative was launched by liberal MEPs Karin Karlsbro (Sweden), Nathalie Loiseau and Petras Auštrevičius.
The letter stresses the principle that “Russia must bear the financial consequences of its war of aggression.” The authors back an initiative by Sweden, Poland, the Netherlands and Spain put forward in late August and propose transferring the frozen accounts to a new EU instrument. That body would assume the legal obligations toward Russia’s central bank and reduce the risks for individual countries, above all Belgium, where Euroclear holds most of the assets. The transfer would be structured as a “reparations loan.”
The assets in question exceed €200 billion. Earlier this year the EU approved a €90 billion concessional loan for Ukraine covering 2026–2027, but the MEPs say that is not enough: Kyiv reports a €23 billion shortfall in defence funding, and the estimated cost of wartime destruction already exceeds €600 billion. EU member states remain reluctant to commit extra money from their national budgets.
The letter’s authors hope for progress by the end of 2026, during Ireland’s presidency of the Council of the EU. A previous attempt to agree on using the assets themselves failed in December 2025 because of legal concerns in several member states.
