Guest post by Drieu Godefridi
Robbing Russia? Is von der Leyen stupid or insane?
Belgian Prime Minister Bart De Wever stubbornly refuses to go along with the latest absurd idea from the EU bureaucracy: seizing Russia’s assets in Belgium to offer them to Ukraine. Politico scolds him, claiming he is “harder to convince than Trump” (the ultimate embodiment of evil, apparently).
Confiscating Russia’s sovereign assets in Belgium would indeed be an act of sheer folly. Even during the Second World War, no such step was taken. After Pearl Harbor, for example, President Roosevelt froze Japanese assets — he did not steal them. Never in history have non-belligerent countries seized the central-bank assets of a belligerent state during wartime in order to finance the reconstruction of a third country (source).
- A Direct Violation of International Law
The United Nations Convention on Jurisdictional Immunities of States (Article 21) guarantees the protection of central bank assets when used for non-commercial purposes. Article 5 is unequivocal: “A State enjoys, for itself and its property, immunity from the jurisdiction of the courts of another State.”
The Articles on State Responsibility for Internationally Wrongful Acts (ARSIWA) require that any “countermeasure” be proportionate, reversible, and aimed at resolving a dispute — not destroying an economy.
Finally, the aim has never truly been the “reconstruction of Ukraine,” despite the protestations of the pale apparatchiks in the Berlaymont — headquarters of Ms. von der Leyen’s European Commission. The actual objective is to fund Ukraine’s war effort. In plain terms: a de facto act of war by little Belgium against imperial Russia. Even the authors most favourable to confiscation acknowledge that such assets could only, under international law, be used for reconstruction — never to finance warfare (Csongor István Nagy, International Investment Law Enables the Use of Frozen Russian Assets to Compensate for War Damage in Ukraine, Harvard International Law Journal, 15 November 2023).
- The Mother of All Financial Crises
All international financial transactions rely on trust, since there is no sovereign arbiter above states. Shattering that trust would unleash a financial crisis that would devastate Europe and the global financial system. Europeans fail to grasp that between their current comfort and poverty lie merely two or three disastrous decisions — precisely the sort the EU excels at making. Our fellow citizens behave as though supermarket abundance were part of the laws of nature, an eternal constant. But when you’ve been living on credit for fifty years, caution is essential. Europe is a leaking financial submarine, and von der Leyen proposes that we throw the hatches wide open — apparently to “breathe easier.”
Every state on the planet would instantly understand that the theft of Russian assets paves the way for the theft of their own, under whatever pretext might be found. One can picture the delight of the Berlaymont’s creatures fantasising about seizing the assets of China, India, the United States, and others, in the name of “insufficient climate efforts,” for instance. Two hundred countries, two hundred portfolios — a banquet for crazed bureaucrats.
The BRICS central banks would pull their reserves out of Western institutions within a week. The euro would become toxic as a reserve currency, and would collapse — for it is not backed by genuine industrial might, but merely by the fading remnants of the rule of law.
Europe is already financially drained after its economic suicide, pompously named the “Green Deal.” Desperate to keep their crumbling system alive a few months more, the EU’s bureaucrats are ready to seize anything within reach. But the rest of the world is not blind. It sees. It understands.
- Russia vs Belgium
And this is without even considering that such a seizure would be treated by Russia as an act of war, triggering massive retaliatory measures and a cascade of lawsuits — lawsuits Moscow would almost certainly win, because the theft of sovereign assets is, under international law, a crime. In the best-case scenario for Belgium, the country would be ordered to return €150 billion to Russia immediately. But alas — the billions would have already been sent to Ukraine, and already “spent”. Who would reimburse Moscow? And interest would keep mounting. Belgium would become a financial vassal of Russia for a century.
In Conclusion
The lessons from this episode are clear:
- When the Belgian Prime Minister demanded “solidarity” from other European states on 23 October — meaning that they should also seize Russian assets on their soil — no one followed. This proves that Belgium’s “partners” are fully aware of the catastrophic consequences of such an act of war, and that the word “solidarity” has lost all meaning. Buckling under severe financial and economic strain, European states are sliding rapidly toward a ruthless every-man-for-himself logic.
- The fact that a measure so deranged, reckless, and incoherent as the illegal confiscation of Russian assets could be pushed through from start to finish by Ms. von der Leyen and her team demonstrates that the EU is governed by irresponsible and foolish leaders.
This raises a burning question: should Ms. von der Leyen and her band of vandals remain at the helm of the European Union?
A question Mr. Bart De Wever — whose ECR group in the European Parliament supports the von der Leyen Commission — would do well to ponder.
Drieu Godefridi is a jurist (University Saint-Louis, University of Louvain), philosopher (University Saint-Louis, University of Louvain) and PhD in legal theory (Paris IV-Sorbonne). He is an entrepreneur, CEO of a European private education group and director of PAN Medias Group. He is the author of The Green Reich (2020).
You can follow Drieu on X.
The post Robbing Russia? Is von der Leyen Stupid or Insane? appeared first on The Gateway Pundit.