FROM OUR CORRESPONDENT
BRUSSELS – After more than a year of discussions and legal doubts, the European Union has found a solution to theuse of profits generated by Russian assets immobilized following Ukraine’s aggression by Moscow, which amount to approximately 210 billion euros. Yesterday the ambassadors of the Twenty-Seven reached an “agreement in principle” which could allow for free between 2.5 and 3 billion euros per year to finance Kiev’s military support and the reconstruction of the country.
A compromise that also satisfied the neutral countries (Austria, Ireland, Malta and Cyprus), which will be able to limit themselves to providing humanitarian aid. “There could be no stronger symbol and no better use for that money than to make Ukraine and all of Europe a safer place to live,” commented EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen on X (the former Twitter ). The community executive presented a plan in March for the use of these revenues, 90% of which will be allocated to the European Peace Facility, the intergovernmental instrument used for the purchase of weapons. The remaining 10% should instead be transferred to the Financial Assistance Facility for Kiev and earmarked for reconstruction. «The first billion euros should be transferred by the summer, mainly for military support», clarified the vice president of the EU Commission Valdis Dombrovskis on X: «Russia will pay directly for its crimes». The agreement will now have to be confirmed at the level of Union ministers.
Most of the Russian Central Bank’s fixed assets are located in Belgium. The capital cannot be touched according to the law on which the sanctions are based. And in recent months legal doubts had been raised by some member states and by the European Central Bank, which had warned of the risk of undermining confidence in the euro and EU markets. On multiple occasions Moscow has threatened legal action “for decades” in the case of use of extra profits from its fixed assets. The Twenty-Seven have finally decided to proceed, opting for a solution different from that of the United States which allows the American administration to seize the approximately 5 billion dollars of Russian state assets located in the USA and use them for the benefit of Kiev.
Russian assets immobilized in Belgium are administered by Euroclear, an international fund deposit company. The Belgian state applies a 25% tax to the profits produced by frozen assets, against which several EU countries have spoken out. Belgium has therefore opened up the possibility of allocating these tax revenues from 2025 onwards to EU instruments for Ukraine. Until now he had turned the proceeds to Kiev through a national fund. In 2024 the Belgian tax authorities should collect 1.7 billion, of which one billion has already been allocated to military support for Ukraine. Belgium also agreed to reduce the fee Euroclear will charge for handling frozen assets to 0.3% from 3% of net profits.
The ambassadors yesterday also began discussing the fourteenth package of sanctions against Moscow, which aims to both ban the transfer of Russian liquefied natural gas through the EU to third countries and provide technical assistance and other services to ships transporting it. Stops by Russian methane tankers in European ports allow the length of some routes to be reduced. The discussion is only at the beginning and Hungary has already raised doubts (unanimity is needed).
