Supporters of the new investment fund argue that the EU has to generate more revenues from Russia\u2019s sovereign funds to bolster Ukraine in the long term amid a protracted standoff in the peace talks with Moscow.<\/p>\n
Another potential advantage is that it could prove a useful shield against the risk that Hungary might veto the sanctions renewal and effectively hand back the money to Russia.<\/p>\n
The Russian assets are blocked under the EU\u2019s sanctions regime \u2014 which must be unanimously renewed every six months \u2014 and the Hungarian government has repeatedly threatened to use its veto as a sign of goodwill towards the Kremlin.<\/p>\n
Over the past weeks, the Commission held informal talks with a group of countries \u2014 including France, Germany, Italy and Estonia \u2014 to examine legal ways to keep the assets frozen if Hungary blocks the sanctions renewal, two officials with knowledge of proceedings told POLITICO. But the working group did not devise a workaround to achieve this outcome. <\/p>\n
Tough budget arithmetic<\/strong><\/p>\n EU officials are looking for ways to set up the new fund by simple majority \u2014 as opposed to unanimity \u2014 to sideline Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orb\u00e1n.<\/p>\n Critics of the new funding vehicle, however, warn that EU taxpayers will ultimately have to pay compensation for any unproductive investments that are made.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Supporters of the new investment fund argue that the EU has to generate more revenues from Russia\u2019s sovereign…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":196021,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7655],"tags":[331,1789,1194,6725,9216,473,32,12922,474,1824,2190,1197,2199,1215,770,332,2663,1199,657,49,771,335,1116],"class_list":{"0":"post-196020","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-russia","8":"tag-banks","9":"tag-belgium","10":"tag-budget","11":"tag-central-banks","12":"tag-council-presidency","13":"tag-defense","14":"tag-donald-trump","15":"tag-eu-budget-mff","16":"tag-finance","17":"tag-germany","18":"tag-hungary","19":"tag-investment","20":"tag-italy","21":"tag-luxembourg","22":"tag-poland","23":"tag-russia","24":"tag-sanctions","25":"tag-services","26":"tag-ukraine","27":"tag-united-states","28":"tag-war","29":"tag-war-in-ukraine","30":"tag-weapons"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114707760608571892","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/196020","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=196020"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/196020\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/196021"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=196020"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=196020"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=196020"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}