France and Germany oppose confiscation of Russian assets in G7
29 February 2024 09:40
French Finance Minister Bruno Le Maire has publicly rejected US Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen ‘s view that it would be legal to monetise about $300 billion of frozen Russian assets. This was reported by Kommersant Ukrainian 
On Tuesday, Yellen told reporters that there are “strong international legal, economic and moral arguments” for extracting value from Russian assets, confiscating them completely or using them as collateral, and the “countermeasure theory” justifies such actions under international law.
According to Le Maire, France is convinced that there are no sufficient grounds for confiscation under international law. He said that any such steps should be fully based on international law and require the support of all members of the G20, not the G7, which includes Russia itself.
“We do not consider this legal framework sufficient. This legal framework should be adopted not only by European countries, not only by G7 countries, but by all member states of the international community, and I mean all G20 member states,” he said,
– he said.
German Finance Minister Christian Lindner directly agrees with the French minister, who believes that the only realistic step is to confiscate interest income.
The only other country that has expressed more or less clear agreement with the US position so far is Canada, whose Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland said on Tuesday that Canada agreed that there is an urgent need to move forward with the confiscation of frozen Russian assets.
