Ursula von der Leyen has rebuffed European Central Bank fears that raiding the proceeds of frozen Russian assets would damage the euro or financial markets, pointing out that there had been no adverse reaction after western allies first swooped on the holdings last year.
The European Commission president said she would continue to work on a windfall levy on profits generated by the more-than €200bn in Russian state assets stuck in the EU — a plan that alarmed the ECB.
Von der Leyen said on Friday that the EU and its G7 allies had already taken the most “important step” over a year ago when they first immobilised hundreds of billions of euros of Russian central bank assets after Moscow’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine.