EU foreign ministers made a political decision to allow a tax on excess profits from frozen Russian assets. This will be discussed with EU ambassadors this week.
This was reported by Bloomberg with reference to sources.
The EU, the G7 countries and Australia have frozen about €260 billion of assets of the Central Bank of Russia in the form of securities and cash. Most of the assets in the EU are held by the clearing house Euroclear, which earned €3 billion from them last year.
EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell told a briefing after the blocʼs foreign ministers met that they had made progress on the excess profits tax.
The sources said that some countries, including Germany, oppose the seizure of Russian assets for legal reasons.
European leaders are afraid of the consequences, because most of the frozen assets are in the EU, and the idea of confiscation threatens legal consequences — in particular, the frozen assets of the Central Bank of the Russian Federation are protected by international law. However, EU leaders approved a plan to transfer revenues from frozen Russian assets to Ukraine.
- On September 7, 2023, the United States announced that it would transfer confiscated assets of Russian oligarchs to Ukraine for the first time. This refers to about $5.4 million, which will go to support Ukrainian veterans. After that, Estonia announced that it plans to become the first country in the EU to transfer confiscated Russian assets (approximately €38 million) to Ukraine.
- Ukraine expects to receive $300-500 billion from Russian frozen assets.