"Blackmail: Europe has a deadline until 5 p.m. to state its position; If it agrees – there will be total chaos

According to Gojko Drljača writing for Jutarnji list, on Thursday a group of European ambassadors initiated a procedure that could cause the deepest legal-political rift in the history of the European Union.

The Danish Presidency of the Council of the EU informed member states that the ambassadors to the EU—so, not ministers, not heads of state, not the European Parliament, not citizens in a referendum, not national parliaments, but the ambassadors—are starting a written procedure by which decisions on the permanent freezing of Russian assets would be made by qualified majority rather than unanimously.

Despite the fact that even the European Central Bank explicitly gave a negative opinion on using Russian foreign reserves to aid Volodymyr Zelensky’s regime, due to potentially extremely negative legal, financial, and economic consequences for the Union, someone behind the scenes is asking member states to make a decision today by 5 p.m. to overturn the EU’s fundamental principle of unanimity.

This could also mean dragging the EU into a direct armed conflict with Russia, the author emphasizes, adding:

"This is, therefore, a matter for which one would rationally expect an adequate democratic procedure, not an ultimatum-like shortcut. If member states, after years of war in Ukraine, are given less than 24 hours to change the political history of the Union, the question arises: why the urgency?"

It is reminded that the foundation of all previous EU treaties, from Maastricht to Lisbon, was clear: foreign and security policy is decided unanimously.

The reason for embedding this mechanism was simple and deeply democratic: no country should be outvoted on issues that could potentially lead to geopolitical escalation or war.

Furthermore, Drljača notes, unanimity is a kind of safety valve for the Union; an instrument that preserves the balance of power between large and small states, as well as between the bureaucratic center and national democracies.

If this fundamental norm of unanimity is breached through a very strange, semi-formal path—as is currently happening—this sets a precedent that, according to constitutional theory, has the characteristics of an institutional coup.

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The text also raises the deepest question, which almost no one is asking: isn’t this, from a legal and political perspective, the first step toward a long and unspoken war between the EU and Russia?

"The use of Russian foreign reserves to finance the military operations of a third party, according to international law, could be considered a hostile act. If such a decision is made without unanimity, without parliament, and without a referendum, then it is no longer a technical measure, but a historical redistribution of the Union’s role toward Russia and of the bureaucracy’s role toward member states," the author notes.