The EU has reached a political agreement to use profits from Russian assets to support Ukraine’s recovery.

Ambassadors of EU member states to the European Union (EU) this Monday reached an agreement in principle to use profits from frozen Russian assets, which should raise 15 billion euros, to support the reconstruction of Ukraine.

“EU ambassadors have just reached an agreement in principle on a proposal to use exceptional capital gains to support Ukraine’s recovery,” Belgium’s rotating presidency of the Council said in a post on social network X (formerly Twitter ).

This preliminary agreement, which has yet to be formally adopted, was reached this evening at a meeting of the permanent representatives of each EU member state (Coreper).

The European source explained that this is the first step in promoting this measure following the proposal of the Belgian President regarding profits from Russian assets frozen and immobilized in the community.

“Member states made no further comments and agreed in principle with the proposal. The legal text will now be worked on by legal linguists before being sent back to Coreper as quickly as possible, followed by a written acceptance process to ensure we act as quickly as possible and begin collecting emergency revenue to rebuild Ukraine,” the same source said in explanations to the European press.

This approval came exactly a week after Portuguese Foreign Minister João Gomes Cravinho emphasized the “political consensus” in the EU to use profits from frozen Russian assets to benefit Ukraine (around €15 billion).

“[Quanto] to the discussion that is going on around Russian funds frozen due to sanctions, whether they can be used to restore Ukraine, […] At the moment there is no legal basis for this, but there is a political consensus on the use of the proceeds from these frozen funds, which are already significant,” said João Gomes Craviño.

Speaking to the Portuguese press in Brussels after a meeting of the heads of European diplomacy, a Portuguese official noted that “about 15 billion euros” of income were at stake from the use of profits from such immobilized Russian assets.

“This is a very significant amount and there is political consensus to use the proceeds from the frozen funds to support Ukraine,” Craviño said, explaining that “there is still some technical work to be done, which will be done over the next few days.”

Late last year, the European Commission proposed an initiative to identify resources associated with Russian sovereign assets frozen due to EU sanctions, with a view to using them to rebuild Ukraine.

The measure, which initially included full use of frozen Russian assets and is now targeting their profits, comes at a time when 27 EU member states (mainly Belgium) have already frozen more than €200 billion of Russian assets due to sanctions policies . .

The Russian military offensive into Ukraine, launched on February 24 last year, has plunged Europe into its most serious security crisis since World War II (1939-1945).

Ukraine’s Western allies have supplied weapons to Kyiv and approved successive packages of sanctions on Russia in an attempt to reduce Moscow’s ability to finance the war.