This was the main decision G7 leaders made at their summit. And to enable it, the EU was to adopt a law prolonging the freezing of sovereign Russian assets until Moscow had paid for its war against Ukraine in full. This would guarantee the frozen assets would continue to be available to produce the interest needed in order to repay the $50 billion advanced to Ukraine.
The decision itself was a creative compromise. The U.S., Canada and the U.K. would have preferred seizing not just the interest but all $300 billion as well. However, in the absence of consensus, this solution was approved by heads of state and government.
The decision was still meaningful and important for Ukraine — $50 billion roughly accounts for the country’s annual budget shortfall, and under the G7 formula, this would be made up for without burdening EU or U.S. taxpayers. Moreover, codifying a legal framework for seizing the interest and putting a mechanism in place to monitor the use of funds would provide “proof of concept” for the future — for example, if there were to be an agreement to seize and use the principal of the frozen assets as reparations.
But EU implementation is now stuck. None of the bloc’s big players — not German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, French President Emmanuel Macron or even von der Leyen herself — have jumped in to get implementation moving.
And without EU legislation, the U.S. is stuck as well. Until the bloc provides the legal framework, the U.S. can’t view its financing as a loan backed up by real resources. Instead, it would be viewed as an expenditure and thus require Congressional appropriation. And as anyone who watched Washington struggle with its military assistance package for Ukraine earlier this year knows, that simply wouldn’t happen fast enough — if at all.
So, why exactly is the EU stuck? The most obvious reason for delay is simple bureaucratic inertia in the wake of the European Parliament election. There have also been summer vacations, while Brussels is locked in negotiations about forming a new Commission. But all this amounts to the bloc fiddling while Kyiv burns.
