The British news outlet reported on Monday, citing sources that some members of the German government believed the plan would fail to gain enough support for realization since the legal threats were "too high."
Berlin has been doing "everything it legally can" to identify and freeze the assets of sanctioned Russian citizens and entities, but Brussels's intention to use the funds for rebuilding of Ukrainian economy and infrastructure has raised "complex financial and legal questions," the newspaper reported.
The report said that the EU was seeking to raise as many as 3 billion euros ($3.3 billion) a year from the holdings of Russian central bank assets and that Kyiv was also developing an alternative way for the bloc to use the seized assets as collateral, through which it could take loans to invest for a return and then allocate the money to Ukraine.
"The challenge is to try to work out what is legally sound and defensible. It's more complex than anybody thought at the outset," an EU diplomat familiar with the matter was quoted as saying by the newspaper.
The foreign ministers of the EU nations are expected to discuss the issue at a meeting in Luxembourg on Monday, the report added, according to Sputnik.
Last week, European Commission spokesperson Christian Wigand announced that EU representatives, commissioners and legislators would start discussing in July a legal framework that would enable the confiscation of assets of Russian citizens and entities accused of violating EU sanctions. EU banks are holding 24.1 billion euros of assets belonging to individuals and private entities, Wigand added.
The EU member states have also reported having more than 200 billion euros of Russian central bank's assets frozen in their banks.
MNA/PR
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