The Bank of Russia has filed a claim at the General Court of the European Union seeking to annul Council Regulation (EU) 2025/2600, adopted on 12 December 2025, arguing the measure unlawfully locks up its assets and strips it of effective legal remedies.
The filing, submitted in Luxembourg on 27 February 2026 under Article 263 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union, is the latest front in a widening confrontation between Moscow and European capitals over roughly €210bn of Russian central bank assets held in the bloc, much of it in Belgium.
In its 3 March 2026 press release, the Bank of Russia claimed Regulation 2025/2600 prohibits any direct or indirect transfer of its assets “for an indefinite period” and blocks “judicial protection” for the rights it says have been infringed, including enforcement of court decisions or arbitration awards connected to the measures.
The EU’s regulation, published in the Official Journal on 13 December 2025, was framed as an emergency response to “serious economic difficulties caused by Russia’s actions in the context of the war of aggression against Ukraine”, explicitly referencing Russia’s full-scale attack launched on 24 February 2022.
Brussels has argued the prohibition was needed to prevent assets already immobilised under sanctions from being moved back to Russia and to limit economic and legal risks inside the Union.
The Bank of Russia, however, is attempting to recast the policy as a direct collision with core legal principles. It argued the measure violates “inalienable rights” including access to justice, inviolability of property and sovereign immunity for states and their central banks, and that this cannot be reconciled with the rule of law.
The unanimity dispute
A central plank of Moscow’s argument is procedural. The Bank of Russia claimed the Council adopted the regulation not by unanimity but by a majority vote, “bypassing” the requirements it says apply under Article 215 of the treaty, the provision typically used to implement sanctions.
That legal architecture matters because the dispute is not only about whether Russian sovereign assets should stay immobilised while the war continues, but about how far the EU can stretch its internal rules to keep them locked down when political unity is fraying.
The lawsuit lands amid European efforts to use the immobilised assets, or the income they generate, to support Ukraine’s funding needs in 2026 and 2027, a strategy that has repeatedly collided with fears of legal blowback and Russian retaliation.
Those fears are not theoretical. Russia’s central bank has already pursued parallel litigation against Euroclear, the Brussels-based securities depository holding most of the assets.
For the EU, the policy has been presented as a necessary wartime financial firewall: keep the Russian central bank’s reserves immobilised, prevent any sudden release and preserve leverage until Moscow ends its invasion and pays compensation.
For the Bank of Russia, the court challenge is an attempt to punch a hole in that firewall by attacking the regulation’s foundations in Luxembourg, while reserving “all rights, claims, objections and remedies” in connection with Regulation 2025/2600 and any related EU or member state measures, according to its statement.
