Europe is in a bind. After months of trying to tap the €140 billion in immobilised Russian assets parked in Belgium to replenish Ukraine’s war chest, the European Union is scrambling for a workable plan.
Belgium’s move to torpedo the proposal in October was the first setback. More recently, US President Donald Trump’s peace plan has added another curveball: his 28-point blueprint floats using those same assets for a post-truce, US-led reconstruction — with Washington pocketing half the proceeds.
Enter Norway. With the EU caught between a reluctant Belgium and an unapologetically transactional United States, some attention has swung north. Norway, sitting on a sovereign wealth fund swollen by wartime energy profits, has suddenly emerged as a plausible European escape hatch. In Brussels and Oslo, pressure is mounting for the Norwegian government to back a loan guarantee for Russian state assets immobilised in Belgium. But so far, despite its enormous financial firepower, Norway’s enthusiasm remains cool.
Norway’s funding choice
In a curious twist, the man who now largely holds the pen on any Norwegian guarantee is also one of Europe’s most seasoned Ukraine defenders: former NATO chief Jens Stoltenberg, today Norway’s finance minister.
He has not been keen. “I have seen speculation suggesting that Norway could use our sovereign wealth fund as a guarantor for such a loan. This is not an option,” Stoltenberg told the Norwegian public broadcaster TV2 on 12 November. He also said that the EU wasn’t planning to ask Norway to back a guarantee.
However, that same week in Brussels he cracked the door open — if only slightly — saying Norwegian involvement depended on the fine print of the EU's proposal.
The hesitation has angered some Norwegians. They argue that soaring oil and gas prices in the early years of the war handed Norway windfall profits that it now has a moral obligation and a strategic necessity to share.
Norway’s complex five-party governing constellation is split. The Reds, Greens, and Socialist Left support backing a loan guarantee, while the Center Party and Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Støre’s Labour Party — Stoltenberg’s own — remain cautious. The opposition Liberal Party is also on board, according to Norwegian media.
The optics aren’t lost on anyone. Only a year out from playing a major international role rallying support for Ukraine as NATO Secretary-General, Stoltenberg is now balking when it comes to Norway’s own wallet.
“Will Europe’s security be lost on his watch?” said Norwegian economist Håvard Halland, in a play on the words of Stoltenberg’s recent memoir, “On My Watch.” Halland and fellow Norwegian economist Knut Anton Mork have long argued that Norway should do more for Ukraine and, in recent weeks, have said that using the country’s “ultra-strong” triple-A credit rating to guarantee the Belgian-held Russian assets would be a low-cost, low-risk way to do so.
Halland told The Parliament that while the Norwegian government consistently refers to the country’s “aid” and “support” for Ukraine, “such fiscal transfers fundamentally serve Europe's and Norway's own security interests.”
Norway has raked in billions
By the Norwegian finance ministry’s accounting, Norway has earned around €106 billion in windfall profits since Russia’s invasion began — the payoff for one of Europe’s last major gas suppliers as prices soared.
To put it in perspective: Ukraine’s annual financing needs hover around €70 billion, according to the European Commission. In other words, transferring those excess profits would keep Ukraine’s war machine rumbling along for at least another year.
Yet, the Norwegian government has proposed to contribute a total of €23 billion to Ukraine between 2023 and 2030 — a comparably high commitment but still a fraction of the war-time gains.
The money flows into Norway’s massive sovereign wealth fund, a €1.7 trillion financial fortress created in the 1990s to safeguard hydrocarbon wealth for future generations. The discovery of oil and gas in the North Sea in the late 1960s has made the fund so large that its value works out to roughly €300,000 for every citizen in the 5.6-million-strong country.
Successive governments have guarded the fund diligently, limiting annual domestic withdrawals to 3% — though that rule has been bent in crisis, including during the COVID-19 pandemic when the government used the fund to pad the state budget.
Skeptics fear that once the fund is open to political aims, it could become a target for every geopolitical emergency or domestic priority.
That logic underpins Støre and Stoltenberg’s line: contributions to Ukraine must travel through the regular budget, not the fund.
Mork and Halland counter that the fund has profited handsomely from the war — a surefire example of politics — and that Norway and Europe’s security is at risk. Besides, politics has seeped into fund management in the past, as Oslo has come under fire for investing in Israeli companies and drilling in the North Sea.
In addition, if the issue at hand is to guarantee a loan against the Russian assets in Belgium, rather than direct funding, the sovereign wealth fund wouldn’t need to be ‘tapped’ per se — Norway’s triple-A credit rating would do the trick, according to economists.
Stoltenberg’s resistance
In early November, Stoltenberg met with Nordic and European leaders about whether Norway could help back the value of the frozen Russian assets Belgium is sitting on.
The calls are growing. Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen called the idea “great.” Former NATO Security-General and Danish Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen also urged Norway to step up.
“Norway has the means and the duty to do much more and take responsibility for the security of Ukraine and Europe,” he told the Danish publication Politiken in late October.
There may also be other motives behind Oslo’s hesitation. According to Mork and Halland, Norway is nervously eyeing looming EU ferroalloy tariffs that could hit its economy hard. A softer EU line on those metals might make Norway more flexible.
Meanwhile, time is running out for Ukraine. Without a new European funding deal, Kyiv is projected to go broke as early as April. Timothy Ash, an associate fellow at Chatham House, told The Parliament that using the immobilised Russian assets should be a no-brainer. “The discussion here is a bit ridiculous,” he said.
“I think Norway is willing to provide a very significant financial backstop in the context of indemnifying risks for Belgium,” he added, pointing again to Norway’s wartime profits.
Yet to others, the whole saga is becoming a “poisoned chalice,” echoing crisis-era tussles over broken budgets and creative financing. Dutch historian Luuk van Middelaar, founding director of the Brussels Institute for Geopolitics, told The Parliament the debate recalls the eurozone crisis, when leaders were ready to break spending taboos to keep the project alive.
Belgium’s continued resistance could force Stoltenberg back into the spotlight with major implications for his legacy. Does he seize the moment to show that a small northern country can wield oversized influence when Europe needs it the most? Or will he ultimately protect Norway’s oil-soaked treasure — and leave the continent searching for another savior?
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