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EU to set up group to determine legality of using frozen Russian assets — Swedish PM

Since the spring of 2022, the EU has repeatedly stated that it has frozen about $300 billion of Russia's gold and foreign exchange reserves

STOCKHOLM, February 14. /TASS/. The EU will create a special group to assess the legal conditions for using Russia’s frozen assets, Sweden’s Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson told a press conference on Tuesday. Sweden now holds the European Union presidency.

"Almost every EU Council meeting is about Ukraine," he said.

"Part of this work now concerns the use of frozen Russian assets in EU countries in accordance with international and EU laws. Now the EU will intensify efforts to use them to restore Ukraine. Tomorrow in Brussels, the creation of a group will be announced, which will be headed by [director general of the National Trade Board (Kommerskollegium)] Anders Ahnlid," the Prime Minister added.

According to him, the group will have to determine what assets are available in the EU. It also needs to consider how the use of assets will be legally handled, but there is no "ready-made model" for this.

"In principle, it is quite clear that Russia must pay for the restoration of Ukraine," Kristersson said.

As Ahnlid explained, the group will present the results of its work to the EU Council, which in turn will make a decision. He added that, first of all, the group will have to answer the question of how much money is involved. Ahnlid reminded that the majority of the money is part of the foreign exchange reserve of the Bank of Russia, deposited in the EU countries.

Since the spring of 2022, the EU has repeatedly stated that it has frozen about $300 billion of Russia's gold and foreign exchange reserves. In the autumn, the European Commission reported on the freezing of another $19 billion of "Russian oligarchs."

However, the European Commission has not yet managed to confiscate this money, since such a mechanism does not exist in international practice. Moreover, such a step would further undermine the confidence of the rest of the world in the reliability of placing their assets in Western banks.

In this regard, at the end of 2022, Brussels began to consider a plan according to which the frozen funds, while formally remaining Russian, could be temporarily invested by the European Union, and the proceeds from these investments would be used to support Ukraine. However, as it turned out, this plan is still impossible to implement.

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