In Austria, the possible illegal confiscation of Russian assets was called a shame

The decision to confiscate Russian assets in the European Union must be such that it cannot then be challenged in court, otherwise it will be a shame, Austrian Foreign Minister Alexander Schallenberg said on the air of the ORF television channel.

“Confiscation is a serious interference with rights. We need to make sure that later it can not be challenged in the European Court <...>. Here, any decision, be it sanctions or the use of frozen funds, can be challenged in Luxembourg at the European Court. And if the court cancels the decision, then this will be a retaliatory blow and, one might say, a shame, ” said he (TASS quote).

European Union earlier came concluded that there is no legal basis for the complete confiscation of frozen Russian assets, Bloomberg wrote in June, citing a community report. It was reported that the EU is considering several options for using more than 200 billion euros of assets of the Bank of Russia in order to send them to Ukraine. The working group on this issue does not see “a reliable legal path to confiscate frozen assets only on the grounds that these assets are under EU restrictive measures.” In this regard, the bloc advocates “for the direction of windfall profits from investments to Ukraine.” Shallenberg noted that if Russian assets are confiscated, and then the decision is challenged in the courts and canceled, then this will “become a diplomatic and economic disaster”

After the start of the special operation in Ukraine, Western countries blocked 300 billion euros of reserves of the Central Bank of Russia and 19 billion euros of private funds of Russian businessmen, the head of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, announced in November 2022. The Kremlin called the freezing of Russian assets a theft.