EU nears decision on use of €211 bln of frozen Russian assets – von der Leyen
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The European Commission will soon present proposals for the use of revenues from Russia's sovereign financial assets blocked on the territory of the EU, the amount of which currently reaches €211 billion, in the interests of the restoration of Ukraine.
The President of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, stated this on October 27 in Brussels during a press conference following the results of the EU summit, the correspondent of Ukrinform reports.
"Regarding the frozen assets of Russia in the European Union. This was also a point of discussion. In March of last year, together, we made an important political decision to freeze sovereign Russian assets. The volume of these sovereign assets reaches 211 billion euros. Politically, we agreed that, of course, Russia should pay for the long-term reconstruction of Ukraine," said the head of the European Commission.
Von der Leyen reminded that the EU finance ministers recently discussed this topic during a meeting in Marrakesh. This made it possible to achieve significant progress and define the fundamental principles of such actions.
The next step will be to present proposals on how these frozen Russian assets can be used.
"We are currently working on proposals that, from the beginning, were focused on the so-called additional income. In other words, these proposals will be about how to use the accruals from these assets, which currently benefit a limited number of financial institutions in the European Union.
These additional profits are already quite substantial. The idea is to concentrate them together and then completely direct them, through the EU budget, for Ukraine and the recovery of Ukraine," von der Leyen added.
It should be noted that a two-day EU summit was held in Brussels on October 26-27. During it, the heads of state and government of the EU countries discussed the revision of the EU's long-term budget for 2024-2027, in particular, the creation of the Ukrainian Fund in the amount of 50 billion euros, based on the next four years.
The European leaders will decide on this at the next summit meeting in December this year.
Other issues discussed at the summit:
- the situation in the Middle East;
- migration matters, regulation and protection of the external borders of the EU;
- ways of increasing the competitiveness of the European economy.
In addition, at the summit, EU leaders assured that they will continue to provide strong financial, economic, military, humanitarian, and diplomatic support to Ukraine and its people as long as needed.
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It should be noted that Ukraine, together with its partners, is developing a mechanism under which the frozen assets of the Russian Federation will be able to be transferred to Ukraine as compensation for the losses caused by the war. For this, a register of losses was created, and it should become operational next year.
Bloomberg previously reported that the EU is studying the procedure to confiscate 200 billion euros of frozen assets of the Russian Central Bank. The European Commission is also developing its proposals.
Belgium, in turn, created a special fund to support Ukraine in the amount of 1.7 billion euros, which is filled from taxation of Russian assets frozen in the country.
Also, on October 12, the government of Estonia approved and sent to the parliament a resolution on the use of frozen Russian assets to help Ukraine with them.
In addition, for the first time, the United States will transfer to Ukraine the assets confiscated from Russian-sanctioned oligarchs.
