The situation in Ukraine is becoming critical, and the EU must respond quickly, said Bulgarian Finance Minister Asen Vassilev as he urged his colleagues in the EU Economic and Financial Affairs Council (ECOFIN) to speed up the use of frozen Russian assets.
“The situation in Ukraine is becoming critical. That is why the EU must act quickly,” said Vassilev, as quoted by his press centre.
During the ECOFIN meeting, the EU Commission presented up-to-date information on the economic and budgetary situation in Ukraine.
Bulgaria’s position is that the EU could reach an agreement on the Assistance Mechanism for Ukraine in early February after Hungary blocked €50 billion aid to Kyiv in December. According to Vassilev, the EU cannot afford to tie support for Ukraine to internal or other EU problems.
After the start of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the USA, the EU, and other Western partners froze Russian bank assets worth about $300 billion. EU sanctions against Russia were extended against hundreds of Russian citizens and companies, but Bulgaria continues to stubbornly do nothing about it.
The country is the only one in the EU that has not imposed sanctions on any Russian citizens or Russian companies on the EU’s sanctions list.
The only sanction measure taken in Bulgaria so far is the refusal in May 2022 of the Registration Agency to allow former Bulgarian Finance Minister Milen Velchev and his partners to acquire the business of the Russian bank VTB in Bulgaria.
After the start of the war, Russia declared Bulgaria an enemy state and unilaterally stopped the supply of natural gas in violation of the current contract.
Last September, the ruling majority in the parliament began discussing a draft law on the implementation of international sanctions, the main target of which was Russia.
At the moment, Bulgaria has no internal instruments for implementing sanctions imposed by a decision of the UN Security Council or the EU.
The most complicated issue remains the legal application of the sanctions against Russia because there is no term in Bulgarian legislation for “freezing” of property, as it is applied by other EU countries concerning Russian assets.
(Krassen Nikolov | Euractiv.bg)
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Source: euractiv.com
