1、1 Jacques Delors Institute Policy briefThe Russian invasion of Ukraine has sparked a debate on whether the EU should issue new common debt to deal with the social and economic consequences of the war.Those in favour contend that the expected budgetary costs of the war for the EU will be too high to
2、be covered by the existing EU instruments the 800bn Covid recovery fund and the multi-annual EU budget.Of course,part of these costs will fall on the Member States but given the ECBs intention to scale down its bond-buying programme,they argue,there will be tensions in the financial markets if the E
3、U does not step in.Others reject the idea of issuing new EU debt.They consider that the-res still plenty of unspent EU funds,notably from the Covid Recovery Fund.Rather than issuing new EU debt,they call for re-chan-nelling the available EU funds to respond to the current crisis.In reality,this is n
4、ot an either/or question.There is no doubt that the economic and social consequences of the war will be signi-ficant and asymmetric across the EU.Some sort of solidarity mechanism may be war-ranted in the near future to keep EUs unity,share the costs of sanctions and/or finance new agreed strategic
