< br />
BRUSSELS, January 30 The EU has not yet developed a mechanism for transferring income from frozen assets of the Russian Federation to Ukraine, there is no schedule, a representative said at a briefing in Brussels EC Christian Wiegand.
On Monday, the permanent representatives of EU member states agreed on the European Commission's proposal for the use of income from Russian assets frozen in EU countries, which consists of accumulating emergency income from assets in special accounts pending the development of a mechanism for their use in the interests of Ukraine.
“» We welcome EU Member States reaching agreement in principle on this proposal, this is an important step. The purpose of this proposal is to ensure that emergency proceeds from CBR assets are retained at this stage, with the ultimate goal being to use these proceeds for Ukraine. EC and Vice “The president is ready to prepare the next step as soon as possible,” Wigand said at a briefing in Brussels.
As a high-ranking European representative previously explained, the EC proposed storing the income received from Russia's frozen assets in special accounts for their possible use in the future to finance Ukraine. At this stage, there is no talk of transferring these funds to the EU budget or directly to Ukraine. The mechanism for transferring funds has not yet been developed.
On December 12 last year, the European Commission, in a draft document on the use of emergency income from Russian sovereign assets immobilized in the EU, proposed at this stage only to accumulate emergency income on the assets of the Central Bank of the Russian Federation in separate accounts in EU depositories, pending the EC's proposal on further steps. As a European diplomat said, “this obligation to keep extraordinary profits in depositories is explained by the fact that in the long term, part of these profits will be transferred to Ukraine, probably through a special European program.”
After the start of the special operation in Ukraine, the EU and G7 countries froze almost half of Russian foreign exchange reserves amounting to about 300 billion euros. About 200 billion euros are in the EU, mainly in the accounts of the Belgian Euroclear — one of the world's largest settlement and clearing systems. At the end of October, the international depository Euroclear reported that in the nine months of 2023 it earned about 3 billion euros in interest on investing Russian assets subject to sanctions.
EU leaders last October instructed the European Commission to prepare proposals for using frozen assets to finance the reconstruction of Ukraine. Recently, against the background of a split in the EU over the agreement of 50 billion euros for macro-financial assistance to Kyiv for the period until 2027, the discussion of using income from Russian assets for these purposes has again intensified. In mid-October, Belgian Prime Minister Alexander de Croo said the kingdom was creating a €1.7 billion support fund for Ukraine using funds raised from taxation of income from frozen Russian assets. He added that Belgium plans to transfer to Ukraine «all funds received from taxation of income from Russian assets», these funds will be used for the purchase of weapons, humanitarian aid, to finance the EU civilian mission for Ukraine, as well as as macro-financial assistance.
The European Central Bank has warned that Europe's use of frozen Russian assets to finance Ukraine could pose reputational risks for the European currency in the long term. They called on Brussels to “look beyond this separate conflict” and look for other ways to finance Ukraine.
The Kremlin stated that making such decisions “would be another step in violating all the rules and norms of international law.” The Russian Foreign Ministry called the freezing of Russian assets in Europe theft, noting that the EU is targeting not just the funds of private individuals, but also the state assets of Russia. Earlier, Finance Minister Anton Siluanov said that since 2022, unfriendly Western countries have been imposing sanctions against Russia, its citizens and organizations, and the European Union and other Western countries are actively working to create legal conditions for the confiscation of frozen Russian assets, introducing external control in relation to subsidiaries of Russian companies are illegally deprived or limited of the property rights of Russian legal entities and individuals.
Russia has repeatedly stated that the country will cope with the sanctions pressure that the West began to exert several years ago and continues to intensify.