- The Russian Central Bank sued the EU Court of Justice for an unlimited asset freeze.
- According to Russia, Western countries have frozen the central bank’s assets worth three hundred billion dollars.
- Most of Russia’s frozen assets are located in Europe in the Euroclear depository.
The Russian Central Bank announced on Tuesday that it has filed a lawsuit at the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) in Luxembourg against the EU Council’s December 2025 decision to freeze its assets indefinitely. Until then, according to the sanctions, member states had to unanimously extend them every six months, TASR writes, according to Reuters and Bloomberg reports.
Russia’s central bank estimates that Western countries have frozen its assets worth about $300 billion. Most of them are frozen in Europe and stored in the Belgian Euroclear depository. The Russian Federal Bank filed a lawsuit against him back in December.
On December 12, the governments of EU member states approved the indefinite freezing of Russian assets in Europe through a majority vote. They thus bypassed a possible veto by Hungary or Slovakia, which announced their disapproval of such a step.
In a statement, Russia’s central bank said the freezing of its assets was adopted with “serious procedural irregularities” because it was adopted by a majority vote and not unanimously, as required by EU law. However, the document on an indefinite freeze rules out the possibility of legal action by Russia in EU courts.
“The EU regulation violates the fundamental and inalienable rights of access to justice and inviolability of property, as well as the principle of sovereign immunity of states and their central banks, which is guaranteed by international treaties and EU law,” said the Russian Central Bank.
