Three years after the invasion of Ukraine, pressure is mounting for Europe to tighten its sanctions against Moscow. With one key question: Can it seize the Russian assets it has frozen to fund Ukrainian defense? This question was rekindled after Donald Trump halted military aid to Ukraine, thereby reinforcing the Russian threat.
In France, the question divides the political world and was at the heart of a debate at the Assemblée Nationale on Wednesday, March 12, based on a motion for a resolution by MP Laurent Mazaury, from the center-right UDI party, calling for stronger support for Kyiv, but without going so far as to seize Russian assets.
A competing text, pushing for their use, was co-signed on Monday by Green, Socialist, Macron-allied and independent MPs. Elsewhere in Europe, 140 Nobel laureates, including Lech Walesa, Joseph Stiglitz, Orhan Pamuk and Patrick Modiano, also called on member states to seize Russian assets, in an open letter published on March 3.
Since the start of the war in Ukraine in February 2022, the European Union (EU) has adopted several series of sanctions against Moscow, including the freezing of sums held in Europe by the Central Bank of the Russian Federation; some €210 billion, the vast majority of which Russia had placed with Euroclear, an international funds depository based in Brussels. In May 2024, the 27 member states decided to use the interest generated by these fixed assets, around €3 billion, a year to support the Ukrainian military effort. They are now being used to repay a $50 billion loan granted by the G7 to Kyiv. Russia has called it “theft.”
(…) was at the heart of a debate at the Assemblée Nationale on Wednesday, March 12, (…)
the original french says :
(…) sera au cœur d’un débat à l’Assemblée nationale, mercredi 12 mars, (…)
So we can expect other translation errors.
I learned from political statements at the beginning of the war that this would be illegal. I didn’t realize that the legal situation had changed. So has our way of thinking about what we are allowed to do changed in recent years? Is this a consequence of the brutality we have seen time and time again in recent years in terms of global politics, and are we allowing this to permanently change our collective sense of justice? Is this not turning us into what we actually want to fight? As you can see, I have my doubts as to whether this is a good idea.
