The European Commission is desperately trying to send Ukraine roughly a hundred billion euros for the next two years of war, but is encountering resistance from the countries that hold the frozen Russian reserves from which the funds are to come. The European Commission's plan is also not succeeding in Japan, which holds EUR 26 billion worth of Russian reserves.
Tokyo clearly rejects the use of Russian reserves for a virtually interest-free and most likely irreversible transfer to Ukrainian accounts for the same reason as Belgium, which holds by far the most frozen Russian assets, some EUR 160 billion worth [calculations vary depending on what all assets are taken into account, ed. note]. Japan fears that if Russian assets were unfrozen, it would have to repay Russia 'out of its own pocket' for the money it has since provided to Ukraine.
However, the European Central Bank also refuses to guarantee the money provided to Ukraine. In addition to Belgium, the European Commission's plan is also rejected by the United States itself and by some other EU countries, especially Hungary and Slovakia.
However, Japan's rejection is a real 'cold shower' for the European Commission, because it reveals that the plan does not have support even among its non-US allies. The European Commission has thus embarked on a historically untested experiment for which it has not negotiated wider support, so that the whole plan is looking more and more like a failed job done in haste.
But the European Commission debacle reveals a fundamental crisis in the EU's governance: its democratic deficit. Governments that are directly accountable to their voters and actually manage their taxes, such as those in Belgium and Japan, are rejecting the European Commission's plan.
On the other hand, the European Commission, which is directly accountable to no voters and manages virtually no taxes, is morally gambling with money in its megalomania. It bears no responsibility for their loss - unlike Belgium, Japan and, in a sense, even the European Central Bank.
Is it a sign of the advanced democracy of which the European Union likes to pride itself that fundamental and potentially historic decisions are in fact taken by ordinary bureaucrats who are not directly elected and are not directly accountable to the electorate?
Such an arrangement opens the door to moral hazard and gambling with taxpayers' money, which only underlines the attitude of Belgium and Japan.
The question is whether the European Commission should not put its feet on the ground and, instead of gesticulating and showing force, for which it clearly has no natural mandate, return to being a mere service and administrative body of the genuinely elected governments of the EU Member States.
Indeed, it should realise that playing Winston Churchill may be attractive, but especially to the uninformed - because others know full well that Churchill's resolute and ultimately victorious stance during the Second World War was based on a natural direct mandate from the electorate.
Churchill was risking his own fate and that of the entire nation that gave him the mandate to do so, whereas the European Commission is in fact risking nothing - it is merely morally gambling with money that does not belong to it and that the taxpayers have not entrusted to it to manage.
The text, which has undergone light editing, was originally published on lukaskovanda.cz.