According to Russia Today TV on March 5, France's Macron warned against confiscating frozen Russian assets, claiming that such a move would violate international law and weaken Europe. The United States and the United Kingdom have been pushing for action to confiscate these assets and use them to finance Ukraine**.Since the start of the Russia-Ukraine conflict, the West has frozen about $300 billion in assets belonging to Russia's central bank.
According to the report, on the 5th, Macron said at a joint press conference with Pavel in Prague that he supported the European Commission's proposal to tax the profits generated by the reinvestment of these funds, and believed that this move has the potential to release 3 billion to 5 billion euros per year to strengthen Ukraine's defense capability.
Europe and Russia.
Comment] We know from news sources that the West has frozen about $300 billion in assets belonging to the Central Bank of Russia.
$300 billion in assets is still huge for Russia, and Russia's total GDP in 2023 is only 199 trillion US dollars, and 300 billion US dollars, is almost one-sixth of the total annual GDP.
With these dollars, Russia can import quite a few goods, at least to a certain extent, to alleviate inflation in Russia. According to data in the Russian ** document, Russia's inflation rate in the first quarter of this year was 76%。
However, the root cause of inflation in Russia is the West's sanctions against Russia and the Russia-Ukraine war.
After encountering Western sanctions, Russia was unable to export to the West to obtain profits, so it did not import Western goods in excess of foreign exchange; In addition, after the import is blocked, Russia will also lose the Western channel to import goods.
This has also led to problems with domestic supplies in Russia.
The Russia-Ukraine war has forced the Russian military to increase its procurement of domestic supplies, and in the context of tight supply and increased demand, Russia has seen as much as 7With inflation of 6%, it is not surprising that Russia will have to find another way to alleviate this problem.
Russia's strengthening of economic cooperation with China has indeed alleviated some of the problems, and China and Russia may strengthen cooperation in the future.
However, Russia may not have much hope for the $300 billion in assets on the Western side. Macron said that not confiscating Russian assets does not mean that these assets should be returned to Russia.
"He supports the European Commission's proposal to tax the profits generated by the reinvestment of these funds, arguing that such a move has the potential to release between 3 billion and 5 billion euros a year to strengthen Ukraine's defense capability." ”
It can be said that the idea of the EU is very good, after generating profits from the investment of Russian assets, and then use part of the profits to support the war between Ukraine and Russia. To put it simply, it is to fight Russia with Russian money.
If you want to use 3 billion to 5 billion dollars a year to support Russia, then you need to invest 300 billion dollars to get at least 2% of the profit.
At present, the ECB's deposit facility interest rate is 4%, while some commercial banks in Europe had deposit rates as high as 5% last year, and some even higher. If the $300 billion is converted into deposits in a European commercial bank, it will indeed be able to achieve a return of more than 2%.
However, many people now believe that if the ECB is going to cut interest rates in the future, then the deposit rate will fall in the future, and the $300 billion investment may not reach a 2% return.
At present, the global economy is in a downturn, and it is difficult for many countries to have large investment opportunities, and it is not easy to achieve a return of 2%.
So for this $300 billion investment, the EU may have some crooked ideas in the future, such as investing this money in China, and after China increases its value, it will then give part of the profits to Ukraine's defense support. This is tantamount to giving China and Russia eye medicine.
Of course, this is just a conjecture, and the EU may not do so.
If the future investment of 300 billion yuan does not achieve a 2% return, or if there is no return, Europe may also embezzle it. After all, it is not impossible for the EU to embezzle Russian assets by directly freezing Russian assets.
Of course, this proposal of the EU may mean that the EU does not intend to do something too irritating to Russia, but to do something relatively mild to give Russia eye medicine.