On Tuesday, 21 May, the Council of the European Union formally approved the legislative proposal to mobilise the profits generated by the assets of the Central Bank of Russia (CBR) that have been frozen in the EU since Russia’s military aggression against Ukraine began (see EUROPE 13407/2).
In concrete terms, the Member States in which central securities depositories holding more than 1 million [euros] in CBR assets—mainly Euroclear, a company located in Belgium—are established will have to pay the European Commission these profits, which have been collected since mid-February 2024 (see EUROPE 13348/10) and are, in total, estimated at around €3 billion per year.
The allocation key for the collected funds will be as follows: 90% of the sums to the ‘European Peace Facility’ (EPF) and 10% to the ‘Ukraine Facility’, the budgetary instrument implementing the EU’s macroeconomic assistance to Kyiv, via the EU budget. It will be reviewed regularly; the first review is to take place before January 2025.
An initial payment of around 1 billion [euros] is expected to be made at the beginning of the summer.
The legislative text is expected to be published this Wednesday in the Official Journal of the EU.
The mobilisation of profits generated by frozen Russian public assets will be on the agenda of the G7 finance meeting, which will take place in Stresa (Italy) from 23 to 25 May. In Frankfurt, the US secretary of the Treasury expressed that she considers the issue to be “vital and urgent”. The United States is advocating using these profits and those expected in the future as a means of leveraging the provision of around $50 billion in loans on the markets. (Original version in French by Mathieu Bion)