The European Commission has confirmed that it has developed legally acceptable options for the use of Russian assets, both private and public, for the recovery of Ukraine.
European Commission representative Christian Wiegand announced this at a briefing on Thursday.
According to Wiegand, the assets of Russian individuals and legal entities subject to EU sanctions are currently frozen on the territory of the European Union, in the amount of about 24.1 billion euros. Sanctions do not include confiscation of these assets, as this violates the law.
"But we made a proposal to criminalize the violation of EU restrictive measures, and relevant discussions with other EU institutions have already made significant progress. This will allow, in case of evasion of sanctions, to confiscate these assets, which will allow this to be done in accordance with the law, in this case - criminal law." - explained the representative of the European Commission.
As for the state assets of the Central Bank of Russia, they also cannot be simply confiscated, but the European Commission proposed another way at the end of last year.
"The idea is to essentially work with these assets and use the proceeds from them. So, again, we have to follow the rule of law and we can't just confiscate such assets. immobilized. assets," Wiegand added.
