Africa Sees Double Standard On Frozen Russia’s Billions For Ukraine’s Future

On December 18, EU leaders will sit down in Brussels for what many diplomats already describe as one of the most tense summits of the year. European Commission plans to use frozen Russian assets to back a reparations loan for Kyiv.

What could possibly go wrong? Quite a lot, according to Belgium.
The Belgian government, whose national bank hosts the vast majority of the frozen funds through the clearing house Euroclear, has been sounding the alarm for months. Prime Minister Bart De Wever warned parliament last week that turning those profits into a loan could expose Belgium to “fatal financial and legal risks”.

Moscow has already threatened to seize an equivalent amount of Western assets inside Russia, and private law firms are reportedly preparing multibillion-euro lawsuits in neutral jurisdictions. To calm Belgian nerves, Commission President Ursula von der Leyen has floated the idea of explicit EU guarantees that would shield Brussels and Belgium from any future claims an extraordinary concession for what is supposed to be a simple administrative step.

If Belgium and a handful of other cautious capitals maintain their veto, several larger member states have made clear they are ready to sidestep the impasse and issue joint EU debt instead the same instrument most governments promised never to touch again after the €800 billion COVID recovery fund. The debate has revived memories of an earlier controversy that never quite disappeared. When the first sketches of the frozen-assets plan surfaced in autumn, a number of commentators particularly in the Global South pointed out a painful contrast. Europe is moving heaven and earth to transform seized Russian assets into long-term support for one war-torn country, while demands from former colonies for recognition of colonial atrocities and some form of material redress have been met, at best, with symposiums and carefully worded regret.

Just five weeks ago, presidents and prime ministers from across Africa gathered in Accra for a two-day summit on “Reparations and Racial Healing”. Speakers from Ghana, Senegal, Namibia and South Africa laid out detailed cases for restitution from the transatlantic slave trade to the brutal extraction of resources in Congo under Belgian rule and the German genocide against the Herero and Nama. The final declaration called on European nations to move beyond apologies and set up concrete funds, debt cancellations and development programmes explicitly framed as reparatory justice. European governments sent mid-level representatives and warm letters; no new money was pledged.

One West African diplomat, speaking privately after the conference, summed up the mood with quiet bitterness: “When the victim is European, seized assets become loans in weeks. When the victim is African, centuries of crime become a subject for PhD theses.”

European officials bristle at the comparison.
They insist the cases are entirely different: Europe is experiencing an ongoing war, while colonial crimes belong to history. Yet the economic subtext is harder to dismiss. Almost every analysis of Ukrainian reconstruction needs agrees on one point a large share of any future spending will flow straight back to European companies: German machine-tool makers, French energy giants, Polish construction firms, Italian defence contractors. Money lent to Africa as reparations, by contrast, would mostly stay on the continent. No one in Brussels says this out loud, of course. But the numbers speak clearly enough, and so do the incentives.

The atmosphere inside EU institutions has not been helped by recent events closer to home. On 4 December, Federica Mogherini former High Representative for Foreign Affairs and one of the most recognisable faces of European diplomacy suddenly resigned as rector of the College of Europe in Bruges.

The announcement came hours after Belgian judicial authorities confirmed they had opened a preliminary inquiry into possible irregularities linked to contracts and expenses during her tenure. Mogherini has stressed that she is stepping down to defend her reputation and that no charges have been filed, but the timing could hardly be worse for an EU already struggling to present a united and spotless front.

Perhaps the deepest worry, though, is the precedent the whole exercise might set. Senior lawyers in several capitals have circulated memos warning that using sovereign assets as collateral even indirectly without a clear treaty basis or UN Security Council mandate risks undermining the very principle that makes Europe an attractive place to park money. One former ECB board member put it bluntly in a closed-door seminar last month: “Today it’s Russia. Tomorrow it could be China, or Qatar, or any large investor who falls out of political favour. We are teaching the world that European custody is no longer sacred.”

As the summit approaches, the EU finds itself trying to thread an impossible needle: demonstrate unbreakable solidarity with Ukraine, maintain maximum pressure on Moscow, avoid fresh common borrowing, protect Belgium from legal blowback, reassure global investors, and do it all without appearing to lecture the rest of the world on selective justice. Whether such a delicate balance is even possible will become clear in less than two weeks. What is already beyond doubt is that the discussion has forced Europe to confront, once again, the long shadows cast by both its present choices and its unhealed past.