Russia’s Central Bank takes EU to court to challenge its freezing of assets — Novaya Gazeta Europe

Russia’s Central Bank announced on Tuesday that it had submitted a claim to the Luxembourg-based ‌General Court of the European Union challenging the EU’s indefinite freezing of Russian assets over its 2022 invasion of Ukraine.

The legal challenge, which was submitted to the court on Friday, argues that the measures taken by the EU violated Russia’s property rights, its right to justice, and “the principle of sovereign immunity of states and their central banks”.

In December, the European Parliament agreed to make the freezing of the Russian Central Bank’s €210 billion of assets held in the EU indefinite, having previously reviewed the measure every six months, which in practice made the freeze vulnerable to a veto from EU member states with pro-Russian sympathies such as Hungary and Slovakia.

That same month Russia’s Central Bank sued Belgian bank Euroclear, where some €190 billion of Russian state assets are frozen, in a Moscow commercial court, amid ongoing EU discussions about using the assets as collateral for a loan for Ukraine.

Tuesday’s announcement marks the Russian Central Bank’s first attempt at litigation against the EU at the General Court of the European Union. In 2023, Sergey Glandin, an expert in international law, warned Novaya Gazeta Europe that attempts to transfer Russian assets to Ukraine would result in a lengthy lawsuit in the court of justice in Luxembourg, which would ultimately be settled in Russia’s favour.

As the plan eventually settled on by the EU doesn’t require the wholesale transfer of Russian assets to Ukraine, its legality remains disputed, with one expert at the International Institute for Strategic Studies, a UK-based think tank, arguing that the “use” rather than the seizure of the assets minimised the risk of legal consequences for the EU.