The Minister for Foreign Affairs Helen McEntee has said the issue of several hundred billion euro in frozen Russian assets should be "kept on the table" as the EU looks for ways to meet Ukraine's defence needs as winter approaches.
Some €210bn in Russian central bank assets were immobilised just days after the invasion on Ukraine in February 2022, around €185bn of which remain held in a Belgian securities depository - Euroclear.
Last December, EU leaders failed to convince Belgium to agree to allow the assets to be used to underwrite a long-term loan to meet Ukraine’s military and budget needs.
Instead, the EU agreed the issuance of joint debt to the tune of €90bn for Ukraine over three years, using the enhanced cooperation mechanism to side-step objections by Hungary.
However, given the intensity of Russia’s attacks on Ukraine in recent weeks, and the prospect of a wholesale assault on the country’s energy infrastructure during the winter months, senior EU figures have suggested the frozen Russian assets should be revisited.
Ukraine has signalled a shortfall of €27bn in its defence budget, as it struggles to meet a much more intensive aerial assault by Moscow using jet-powered drones and ballistic missiles.
Arriving for a meeting of EU defence ministers in Brussels this morning, Helen McEntee said: "We need to keep everything on the table, including the frozen [Russian assets].
"It's obviously very clear from some of our colleagues the challenges that are there. They haven't been fully dealt with or haven't been fully resolved, and so there was a very clear commitment from the Commission to further explore the challenges that have been raised by colleagues and to see is there a way forward. We need to keep that on the table."
Mc McEntee said progress had been made in recent weeks to unlock some €6.6bn in European Peace Facility (EPF) funds for Ukraine. The mechanism, which partly reimburses member states for military equipment sent to Ukraine, had been held up by Hungary’s outgoing prime minister Viktor Orban.
"We need to make sure that as much of this year's money as possible is provided, all of it is provided, and that as early on as possible next year we are providing further assistance," said Ms McEntee.
"Last year Russia attacked about 75% of the critical infrastructure in Ukraine. It's very clear that that's going to start happening again. It's already happening. So ensuring that countries provide that bilateral support, as well as the other mechanisms I've mentioned, is really, really important."
She said the EU needed to keep the pressure on Russia through sanctions, adding that there was an opportunity at the UN General Assembly in New York to impress upon UN members the impact Russia’s war was having "not just on Ukraine, not just on Europe, but now in global food security, in particular in the Global South".
EU discusses new mutual defence mechanism in event of Russian attack
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Russia planning more acts of sabotage in Europe, says Kallas
Arriving at the meeting, EU foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas said intelligence reports showed that Russia was planning more acts of sabotage in Europe.
"We need to be vigilant because we see in the intelligence that Russia is planning more sabotage acts and attacks against our democracy - to divide our society, to intimidate our societies [into] refraining [from helping] Ukraine," she said.
Ms McEntee said the government would "look at" a potential new mutual assistance mechanism, proposed by European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen during her State of the Union speech on 16 September, in light of Russia’s escalating hybrid attacks on European soil.
Ms von der Leyen said Europe needed a "counter hybrid playbook" which would allow member states to respond coherently to hybrid attacks which "fall below armed aggression but clearly threaten our national security".
She proposed a mechanism "to flank NATO’s Article 4" which she described as an Emergency Security Protocol, so that "when triggered by one member state, all member states would convene to coordinate a European response, to deter further escalation, and to mitigate the impact".
The EU already has a mutual assistance clause enshrined in Article 42.7 of the Lisbon Treaty.
Senior defence officials have said that Ms von der Leyen’s suggestion was about how to "operationalise" that clause in the context of increasing attacks on EU member states.
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Minister McEntee said: "We need to look at all of these options. Obviously, we have Article 42.7, something that Ireland has contributed to in the past.
"It's important that whatever we put in place would respect each individual member state's constitutional position [and] at the same time, reflect the fact that we are seeing more and more hybrid attacks.
"We're starting to see this on European soil, whether it was the airport in Leipzig [in Germany], whether it was consistent breaches of airspace into European member states.
"We need to be prepared. We need to be able to not just respond when incidents happen, but also [to] preempt possible escalations, work with member states, work with each other, to make sure that we have a strong response in place should something happen, or to try and prevent that from happening."
She added: "There certainly is an appetite there. Something that would complement Article 42.7… is something that would be welcome and certainly would be helpful."
The meeting in Brussels comes as Russia has been intensifying its attacks on Ukraine, widening its range of targets to include more civilian and commercial infrastructure.
These have included recent attacks on passenger trains, petrol stations and communications networks.
The death toll has been steadily rising as Moscow makes increasing use of jet-powered drones which are harder to track and shoot down.
There is every expectation that Russian President Vladimir Putin will launch relentless attacks on Ukraine’s energy infrastructure as the winter approaches.
