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Europe today faces two wars: the one fought with tanks on the Dnipro, and the one fought with numbers in Brussels.
When Commission President Ursula von der Leyen sent her letter to the 27 Member States outlining three options for financing the €135 billion needed to support Ukraine in 2026-2027, she did not just spark a technical debate. She opened up a political rift that is likely to run through the whole of Europe, because, if we analyse the contents of the letter in depth, the strategic and vital question for a conservative should be: how can freedom be defended without surrendering sovereignty?
Conservative Europe has no doubts about the first point: Kiev’s freedom is our freedom.
Vladimir Putin’s Russia has brought war back to the continent, attacked a sovereign country and wants to show the world that borders can be redrawn with tanks. Faced with this, those who call for ‘neutrality’ are simply masking their inability to choose between aggressor and victim.
But strategic clarity does not mean political naivety. The European conservative right — from Italy to Poland, from the Baltic states to Spain — supports Ukraine without hesitation, but does not accept that the emergency should become a pretext for building a permanent debt union, a financial federalism never voted for by citizens and led more by Commission officials than by parliaments.
Europe must do its part and rise to the occasion. We have been saying this for years, but it must be clearly reiterated that Europe must remain a Europe of nations, not become a central bank with an attached treasury.
The Commission’s three options are not purely technical choices, but political ones
Von der Leyen’s letter presents three solutions. On paper, they appear to be financial alternatives; in reality, they are three visions of Europe.
- National contributions: the path of responsibility, but how sustainable is it?
The first option is a return to basics: each state pays its share. It is the most respectful of sovereignty, but the most difficult to sustain in the face of high deficits, budget constraints back in force and governments that are accountable to their citizens. It is not a path to be discarded — especially if it serves as a bridge — but no one can pretend that it alone is sufficient to cover Kiev’s entire needs.
- Common European debt: the temptation of the ‘permanent model’
Here, the Commission shows its true inclination: to replicate, and possibly institutionalise, the NextGenerationEU paradigm, turning the pandemic exception into a political habit. Common debt can be a tool, not a system. It can be used for common defence, for European public goods, to strengthen the continent’s security — on this, the line taken by conservative governments such as Italy’s has been clear and consistent. But common debt cannot become the stepping stone to a fiscal union by gradually taking budgets away from Member States. The defence of Ukraine must not turn into the capitulation of the democratic sovereignty of European nations. The risk is clear: opening a door that no one will then close.
- Repair loan based on Russian assets (140 billion): the right idea, to be handled intelligently
It is a sound, moral and obvious principle that Putin, and not the European taxpayer, should bear the costs of reconstruction. It would be a powerful deterrent: future aggressors must know that war is costly, and costly indeed.
Yet the shortcut of aggressively using frozen Russian sovereign assets presents enormous risks:
- legal risk (international law, billion-pound arbitration cases);
- financial risk (capital flight from the eurozone if the EU appears unreliable as a guarantor of sovereign assets);
- geopolitical risk (third countries could divest for fear of dangerous precedents).
This is why a cautious but not wait-and-see approach is needed on this issue: yes to using the economic value linked to Russian assets, but with legally watertight instruments, coordinated with the G7, respectful of the market and capable of avoiding systemic shocks: a pragmatic, strategic and non-ideological approach.
The conservative line: help Kiev yes, cede sovereignty no
A real divide is emerging in the European debate. On the one hand, there are those who see Ukraine as an opportunity to complete the fiscal integration of the EU, build a European Treasury, empty national budgets and allow the Commission to borrow at will in the name of ‘common challenges’.
On the other side is the conservative camp, which says:
- yes to supporting Kiev, until victory and beyond;
- yes to extraordinary, targeted, temporary, controlled mechanisms, such as defence Eurobonds;
- yes to making Russia pay, but without destabilising the markets and without violating the law;
- no to the misconception that every crisis justifies a permanent surrender of sovereignty.
This is a balanced and strategic position, the only one that holds together freedom, responsibility, geopolitics and democracy.
A bigger issue: the future of post-Putin Europe
The way Europe decides to finance Ukrainian resistance will determine what kind of Union we will have in ten years’ time. If the federalist line of ‘debt today, integration tomorrow’ prevails, the EU will change its nature without citizens ever being asked to choose.
If, on the other hand, the conservative line prevails — cooperation yes, centralisation no — then the Union will still have a chance to return to what it should be: a community of free nations that decide together, not an anonymous machine that decides for them.
Helping Kiev is a moral duty, but also an existential and strategic necessity in geopolitical terms. However, this does not mean abandoning the founding principles of Europe: sovereignty, legality, democratic accountability, balance between states.
Russia must pay. Europe must support Ukraine. But Europe must not become what its peoples have never asked for: a union of permanent debt and fiscal irresponsibility.
Courage and vision are needed to build a foreign and defence policy that lives up to our history.
And this policy can only come from a conservative right that sees reality for what it is:
a dangerous world, a fragile continent, a challenge that requires strength and prudence.
Europe’s freedom will be defended in Kyiv — but its soul will be defended in Brussels.