Sweden, the Netherlands, Spain and Poland have urged the European Commission to resume work on a mechanism for using frozen Russian state assets to finance Ukraine, the Financial Times reports.
More than €200 billion in Russian central bank assets are frozen in European Union countries. A previous effort to use the underlying capital stalled in part because of objections from Belgium, where a large share of the funds are held.
The initiative by the four countries does not mean that the EU has decided to confiscate the Russian assets. They are calling for renewed legal and technical work on a possible mechanism for using them.
At present, Western governments mainly use the income generated by the frozen assets to support Ukraine rather than the underlying principal.
Original report: Financial Times