European Union leaders grappled with that question at a meeting of the European Council in Brussels Thursday.“The European Council took stock of the work done regarding Russia’s immobilized assets,” the leaders said in a statement after the meeting, adding that they would continue to work on the issue “in accordance with EU and international law, and in coordination with partners.
“The Commission will come forward with a proposal and we will focus prudently on the windfall profits from the immobilized assets of the Russian central bank,” Commission president Ursula von der Leyen told reporters in Brussels Friday at the end of the two-day meeting. Around two-thirds of that, or €200 billion , sits in the EU, mostly in accounts at Belgium-based Euroclear, one of the world’s largest financial clearing houses.
Ordinarily, these payments would have been made to Russian bank accounts, but they have been blocked as a result of sanctions and are now themselves generating vast amounts of interest. Speaking on the sidelines of Thursday’s EU meeting, Latvia’s Prime Minister Arturs Krišjānis Kariņš said frozen Russian assets were “low-hanging fruit.”
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