EU sanctions are not provided by Greece and Malta
To date, 27 EU countries have reported freezing around €20.3 billion of Russian assets under sanctions, with Italy, Ireland, France, Spain, Germany, Belgium, Luxembourg and Austria all reporting actions totaling more than €1 billion.
According to the European Commission document, almost every other EU country has frozen assets worth millions of dollars.
For comparison, Greece reported only a block of asset freezes worth 212,000 euros, and Malta – 147,000 euros.
“It’s a bit strange. Either there aren’t enough of them, or they don’t provide their work. Or they did something, but didn’t tell us, even though they had a chance,” the EU representative said on condition of anonymity.
More than 10 months after Russia’s attack on Ukraine, the EU blacklisted about 1,300 people and 120 organizations. Economic sanctions have also been imposed, covering trade, transport, energy, banking, media and the defense sector.
this year, the EU’s attention is focused on how to confiscate frozen Russian assets and spend them on rebuilding Ukraine. It is also about the assets of the Russian central bank in Europe in the amount of about 300 billion euros.
There is little legal precedent, and some member states express serious concern about further lawsuits, while others say the transfer of assets to Ukraine was the right decision. In this regard, the EU is also working to circumvent criminal sanctions in all member states, which currently do not exist.
The EU representative said that the bloc’s top leadership will have an opportunity to assess progress on these issues when they travel to Kyiv for the EU-Ukraine summit on February 3.