EU summit will demand “decisive progress” regarding use of Russian assets – Reuters

Leaders of European Union member states are expected to call for more progress on the use of frozen Russian assets for the benefit of Ukraine at the 26-27 October summit in Brussels. Source: European Pravda with reference to the Reuters agency, which has the draft joint statement of the EU leaders at its disposal. The European Union summit in Brussels, as the agency said, will call for "decisive progress... on the use of revenues from Russia's immobilised assets."

Diplomats of the EU countries should hold technical negotiations on this issue on 17 October.

The problem with using Russia's sovereign assets is that they legally belong to the state, and unlike private assets, there is no mechanism for their confiscation. Currently, the European Union, as well as the United Kingdom and the United States, support the idea of taxing the income of frozen sovereign assets of the Russian Federation.

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But an EU official told reporters earlier this week that negotiations on this have not been making progress for several months now, in particular, due to the objections of Belgium.

The country homes the Euroclear clearinghouse, which accounts for about 125 billion euros of sovereign assets of the Russian Federation. Belgium representatives, in turn, say that they want a decision not only at the level of the European Union but at the level of the Group of Seven, fearing the outflow of Euroclear customers to other clearing centres. Previously, Belgium announced that it had created a special fund to send 1.7 billion euros for Ukraine, with the money coming from taxation of Russian frozen assets in the country.

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