NOTWe welcome the initiative of the European Council which agreed to tax the interest generated by Russian public capital immobilized in various European states. This tax, allocated 90% to the purchase of arms for Ukraine, constitutes a first step. But this decision seems very timid, when we compare the billion euros promised to the Ukrainians with the 200 billion euros in assets that the Central Bank of Russia has deposited in European financial institutions (out of a total of nearly 300 billion euros placed outside Russia).
Ukraine would immediately use this capital to begin repairing the damage suffered with the destruction of its civilian infrastructure, systematically targeted by Russian missiles. The reconstruction of hospitals, schools, universities and power plants cannot wait for the indefinite end of hostilities.
How can Ukraine’s finances, whose revenues have been reduced by the decline in economic activities, ensure the payment of pensions to war invalids, widows and orphans? How to finance the long and costly care of the countless injured? How can we invest in rebuilding hundreds of thousands of destroyed homes? How can we continue the school and university training of the generation who will have to rebuild Ukraine after the war?
The confiscation of Russian public assets would constitute an advance on the reparations that will have to be paid the aggressor ultimately. The damage caused by the Russian Federation on Ukrainian territory is estimated by the World Bank at nearly 450 billion euros to date. That is already much more than the frozen Russian assets.
While Emmanuel Macron has pleaded for no limit to be set a priori on the action of Ukraine’s allies, why not implement, for reparations, confiscation measures legitimate under international law customary? A document titled State Responsibility for Internationally Wrongful Acts was developed by the International Law Commission created within the United Nations (UN): a State which has suffered damage caused by another State can take countermeasures, such as the confiscation of the assets of the aggressor, in order to force him to repair the damage he has caused. It is this same customary law which constitutes a source of law, enshrined in the statute of the International Court of Justice (ICJ) and which it can apply in disputes between States.
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