EU to retain Russian frozen assets revenues even after lifting sanctions

The European Union (EU) has stated that it does not plan to transfer revenue from frozen Russian sovereign assets, even after sanctions against Russia are lifted, TASS reported on Wednesday.

This decision is part of a resolution published in the Official Journal of the EU, which states that unexpected and extraordinary revenues accumulated due to the EU’s ban on financial transactions with Russia do not constitute sovereign assets and are not subject to rules protecting such assets.

The EU Council has adopted a resolution requiring all EU financial institutions with more than 1 million euros of frozen Russian assets to biannually transfer income from their reinvestment to the European Commission (EC).

The EC will then allocate 90 per cent of these funds to armaments for Kiev and 10% to economic assistance programmes for Ukraine.

Through these transfers, the EC expects to collect 2.5–3 billion euros per year, with the first transfer scheduled for July 2024. The EU currently has approximately 210 billion euros of sovereign Russian assets frozen.

Russia’s permanent representative to the EU, Kirill Logvinov, has criticised the decision, stating that the EU will eventually have to return what was taken from Russia.

He warned that the decision could have unpredictable consequences for the eurozone, the economies of the bloc’s member countries, and the investment climate.