When Ursula von der Leyen spoke about the reconstruction of Ukraine at the FAZ readers' congress at the beginning of the month, she referred to a role model: the 750 billion euro reconstruction fund that the EU set up in the corona crisis.

The President of the Commission highly praised the program that was developed in her house.

It is the reason why the Union is in such a good position today, it links investments with reforms.

Even then you could hear that von der Leyen also considered the special form of his financing to be exemplary: through joint debts taken on by the commission.

Thomas Gutschker

Political correspondent for the European Union, NATO and the Benelux countries based in Brussels.

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Now it is in black and white in a policy paper on the reconstruction of Ukraine, which the Commission wants to adopt this Wednesday and which the FAZ has received in draft form.

It discusses at length what a daunting task the international community, and the EU in particular, will face once the war against the country is over.

Because the financial requirements exceed everything that has already been decided, the commission proposes a special fund or a supplementary budget.

Then comes the crucial point: the states could either raise these funds individually and thus finance both grants and loans for Kyiv.

"However, given the magnitude of loans likely to be needed, the Commission could also be authorized to initiate financing of the loans on behalf of the EU on the capital market."

A "temporally and volume-limited instrument"

This is the most explosive sentence in the eight-page statement on "Ukraine Aid and Reconstruction."

Because this option is by no means as natural as it is presented.

Normally, EU spending has to be covered from what is known as its own resources: these are customs revenues, and in the future maybe also EU taxes, but above all contributions that the states make according to a fixed formula.

Debt is not intended for this.

When the member states agreed on the Corona aid program in July 2000, it was a premiere that was also legally on shaky ground.

It relied on Article 122 of the EU Treaty.

According to this, the Council can “decide on measures appropriate to the economic situation in a spirit of solidarity between the Member States”.

The federal government initially thought this was impossible,

The grand coalition at the time nevertheless insisted that this was a “one-off exception”.

In the traffic light coalition agreement, the Corona aid (official name: "NextGenerationEU") is characterized as an "instrument limited in time and amount", which is on this line.

Other states, on the other hand, see it as a new source of funding that can also be tapped into in the future.

This view has many supporters, especially in the south of the Union, including in France.

President Macron has long pondered how to boost large investments and provide financial support to member states in the event of "external shocks".