Belgium is ready to consider “risky” options for the disposal of Russian frozen assets, provided that legal responsibility is shared between EU countries, the Financial Times (FT) reported, citing a statement by Belgian Foreign Minister Maxime Prevot.
According to the newspaper, the Belgian side controls 190 billion euros of frozen Russian assets. Maxime Prevot said that Belgium cannot be solely responsible for potential claims “which could one day lead to the payment <…> of an amount equivalent to its annual budget”.
The minister said that “now it seems more eager” to share the possible legal burden from the disposal of Russian assets among the 27 EU member states.
“In such a scenario, Belgium does not rule out reconsidering its position. If we have a solid legal framework, if the financial risks are mitigated, and if we have the opportunity to pool risks,” Prevot said, adding that “there are too many ifs.”
According to the minister, the Belgian government views the potential confiscation or otherwise changing the way Russian assets are utilised as “an extremely risky exercise because there is no legal basis for it”.
“It is important for us to keep these immobilised sovereign assets as leverage for negotiations in the peace process and to be able to guarantee that these significant sums will subsequently be used to rebuild Ukraine. Because if we want the hen to continue laying golden eggs, we should not kill it,” the Belgian foreign minister concluded.
Earlier, the editor of the politics department of the Monocle magazine, Petr Skorobogatyy, said on the air of the Opinion programme on News Front that Europe would not seize Russia’s frozen assets “without a signal from the USA”.
