The European Union will not be able to confiscate in the foreseeable future the €5.2bn in proceeds from the reinvestment of frozen Russian sovereign assets for 2022-2023, Reuters reported, citing a European official involved in setting up a mechanism to expropriate Russian funds.
“The EU hopes to receive in the form of revenues from Russian assets for 2024-2027 from € 15 to € 20 billion, depending on changes in global interest rates,” the European official said, commenting on the draft mechanism for the expropriation of these revenues, which the European Commission is preparing for consideration at the EU summit on 21-22 March.
“From the beginning of the war until February this year, revenues from frozen [in the EU] assets (amounting to some €190bn) amounted to €5.2bn. However, since the EU was only able to decide on the status of frozen asset revenues on 12 February this year, the revenues received before that will be very difficult to withdraw retrospectively, to do so will be [theoretically] possible only after the end of the war and the final settlement,” the official noted.
He does not specify that these €5.2bn will be “very difficult to withdraw” not from Russia, but from the Belgian depositary Euroclear, which has already recorded these funds in its operating profit for 2022 and 2023 and paid taxes to the Belgian state on it. The European Commission made a statement in February in which it announced that the proceeds from the frozen assets of the Central Bank of Russia “do not belong to Russia.”
According to European sources, the European Commission intends to propose at the upcoming EU summit that the proceeds from the assets of the Central Bank of Russia be subject to a European tax close to 100 per cent, the proceeds of which would go straight to the European Commission.
At the same time, different departments of the European Commission see different uses for this money. Thus, according to Valdis Dombrovskis, the first deputy head of the European Commission, who is in charge of budgetary issues, these funds can be used to partially finance the €50bn budgetary aid programme for Ukraine until 2027, which was adopted on 1 February. The head of the EU diplomatic service, Josep Borrell, and the European commissioner for the internal market, Thierry Breton, have a different opinion, calling for this money to be invested in the EU defence industry, which will produce weapons for Kiev.
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