Reparations from Russia: The EU Council has All the Tools to Provide Money to Ukraine
A political decision is required.
The Gaze reports on it according to Dzerkalo tyzhnia.
The Council of the EU has instruments to neutralize Belgium's justification. Risks regarding the political lifting of sanctions remain. Currently, the decision to extend the freezing of assets is made unanimously by the EU Council every six months. This allows Hungarian Prime Minister Orbán to hold the EU hostage, constantly bargaining for something in exchange for each vote in favor. This is written by Olena Galushka, co-founder of the International Center for Ukrainian Victory and member of the board of the Anti-Corruption Center, and Andriy Mikheev, expert on international law at ICUV and ANTS, in the article “The War for Reparation Credit.”
"We have previously examined in detail the EU regulations on the duration of sanctions and the burden of proof and found that, on the one hand, the Treaty on European Union does not oblige the EU Council to set a clear duration for sanctions, defining the key criterion for reviewing a decision not as a specific date but as a significant change in circumstances. On the other hand, the EU Council's instructions allow for two approaches to decision-making: extending sanctions after their expiry if the objectives have not been achieved, or lifting sanctions if the objectives have been achieved, with the latter option being explicitly stated as the priority. In the second case, the burden of proof would fall on Orbán and other advocates of Russia's interests," the authors write.
According to them, another option currently being discussed as a priority is a broader interpretation of Article 122 of the EU Treaty, which allows member state governments to make decisions “in a spirit of solidarity, in accordance with the economic situation.” The European Commission wants to interpret this as a transition to extending sanctions by a qualified majority vote, where at least 15 countries representing at least 65% of the EU population would be needed to extend them until “Russia ends the war and pays reparations.”
Thus, the EU Council has a whole range of tools to protect frozen assets and neutralize Belgium's justification, but so far there is no political decision.
“Moreover, if the EU Council fails to reach an agreement now, not only the reparations loan but also the freezing of assets in general will be at risk, as the next deadline for extending the sanctions is the end of January. Failure to extend the sanctions would be a huge gift to the Russian war machine,” the article says.
As the Gaze reported earlier Reparation Loan for Ukraine: Belgium has Reasons not to Give Money.