Several EU countries are pushing for the bloc to collectively scrap 16 investment treaties with Russia that Moscow has used to pursue claims against European companies — and that remain a potential obstacle to putting frozen Russian assets to work for Ukraine.
Belgium, where the bulk of the roughly 200 billion euros ($233 billion) in Russian assets are held, made ditching the treaties a condition for backing an EU plan to use those funds to aid Kyiv during talks last December.
Mostly signed at the end of the Cold War, European bilateral treaties with Russia were intended to promote and protect investments by companies of one state in another.
“EU investors are not safe in Russia and should leave.”
But even though the EU has taken a decisive leadership role in trade relations with third countries since the 2007 Lisbon Treaty, individual bilateral treaties have been allowed to remain in force, largely forgotten, until Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022.
These treaties usually include an arbitration mechanism, which allows companies to challenge discriminatory treatment or the expropriation of their assets.
But now some European governments want to get rid of the treaties entirely, and to do so in a coordinated way so as to limit the scope for Moscow to exact revenge on any single country.
Read also: Outdated treaties leave Ukraine exposed to wave of international arbitration by Russia
Unsafe and unenforceable
Of the 27 EU countries, 17 still have active bilateral investment treaties with Russia. Belgium and Luxembourg share a single treaty with Moscow, meaning there are currently 16 treaties in place.
Only a single EU country so far has terminated its treaty with Russia — Lithuania, in October 2025.
An EU diplomat familiar with Lithuania’s position said part of the reason for the termination was finding “no added value from agreements with states that fail to comply with and respect any international legal norms.”
“EU investors are not safe in Russia and should leave,” they said.
Ukraine terminated its treaty with Russia in January 2025. The U.S signed such a treaty, but it never came into force. Other key countries with an active investment treaty with Russia include the U.K., Canada, Japan, Norway, and Switzerland.
The EU’s 16 treaties have not, however, stopped Russia from seizing European assets when it wishes.
In 2023 alone, Moscow expropriated assets belonging to France’s food company Danone, Danish beer brewer Carlsberg, Austrian oil and gas company OMV, Finnish energy company Fortum, and German energy company Uniper.
An employee wearing a Danone SA-branded gilet stacks bottles of yogurt inside a Magnit PJSC hypermarket store at the Hanoi-Moscow trade center in Moscow, Russia, on Feb. 28, 2018. (Andrey Rudakov/Bloomberg via Getty Images)
The latest high-profile company subject to an asset seizure by Russia has been Austria’s Raiffeisen Bank, from which Moscow expropriated 2.1 billion euros ($2.4 billion) of assets in January 2026, and then awarded it to a Russian investment company called Rasperia, which has ties to the sanctioned Russian oligarch Oleg Deripaska.
Raiffeisen’s strategy to compensate itself for those losses is to essentially swap those stolen assets for an equivalent sum of Deripaska’s assets frozen in Austria.
That strategy has been criticized by civil society organizations as essentially rewarding Raiffeisen for not withdrawing from Russia in 2022, legitimating the Kremlin’s seizure of European companies’ assets, and allowing Deripaska to dodge the pain of sanctions.
When asked to comment, Raiffeisen’s corporate spokesperson Christof Danz told the Kyiv Independent that the bank’s “priorities are supporting Ukraine and exiting Russia. Solving the current legal dispute rapidly facilitates attaining both objectives.”
A man walks past the logo of Raiffeisen Bank seen atop a building in Moscow, Russia on April 3, 2023. (Alexander Nemenov/AFP via Getty Images)
But Raiffeisen has also decided not to challenge Moscow’s seizure of its assets by invoking Austria’s investment treaty with Russia.
“From our perspective, the legal risks, high costs, and the expected difficulties in enforcing a positive judgment speak against it,” Danz said.
“Additionally, such a lawsuit could jeopardize our efforts to sell our Russian subsidiary bank.”
Despite not making use of the bilateral investment treaty available to them, Danz cautioned against terminating the treaties with Russia, which “could erase a last resort area for principles of fairness in Russia as a common European position.”
Read also: Exclusive: Swedish EU letter reopens debate over frozen Russian assets
Pulling the plug
The European Commission has deemed the ongoing existence of the 16 treaties with Russia “not consistent” with the EU’s wider investment protection policy.
“The inconsistency with EU investment protection policy flows from a systematic misconduct by Russia against EU investors since the start of Russia’s illegal and unprovoked full-scale invasion of Ukraine,” a European Commission spokesperson told the Kyiv Independent.
Even though the EU is not a party to the treaties, its executive arm would continue to coordinate member states’ efforts to terminate them, the spokesperson added.
The first call to coordinate such a termination came in December 2025, when EU countries were working on a plan to use frozen Russian assets.
Belgian Prime Minister Bart De Wever, within whose jurisdiction some 200 billion euros ($233 billion) in Russian assets are frozen, demanded that all EU capitals abolish any existing investment treaties with Russia.
Belgium’s Prime Minister Bart De Wever speaks at a press conference after the European Council summit at EU headquarters in Brussels, Belgium, on Oct. 23, 2025. (Nicolas Economou / NurPhoto via Getty Images)
Russian businesses and individuals sanctioned by the EU and Ukraine have weaponized the arbitration process outlined in treaties to besiege European courts with legal proceedings, each of which costs on average $5.3 million.
Belgium has been especially exposed on that front, with sanctioned Russian investors having launched nine separate arbitration proceedings and over 200 cases addressed to Belgium’s supreme court.
No agreement was reached on ending the treaties in December 2025, amid a wider failure of the EU to find agreement on the use of Russia’s frozen assets.
But both the discussion about the frozen assets and about finally getting rid of the treaties seem to be making a comeback.
Sweden, Poland, Spain, and the Netherlands sent a joint letter on Aug. 27 calling for the 27 EU foreign ministers to reopen the issue of frozen assets.
But Belgium’s Foreign Minister Maxime Prevot cautioned on Aug. 18 that his country is “likely to maintain its cautious reserve position,” and with that, likely the same demands, such as that all the countries terminate their treaties with Russia.
Of the four countries seeking to reopen the debate, only Poland does not have an active investment treaty with Russia.
One EU diplomat told the Kyiv Independent that Spain is willing to terminate its treaty with Russia, provided it is done in coordination with other countries.
And the Netherlands is happy to go for a coordinated termination, but does not consider the treaties to present a significant problem, a second EU diplomat told the Kyiv Independent.
Read also: Can Ukraine choke off Russia’s LNG trade at the source?
Just a symbol?
The reason for the lack of concern in the Netherlands might simply be that EU sanctions rules have largely suspended the treaties.
A European Commission spokesperson pointed to a “no-claims clause” in the EU’s sanctions regulations, which says EU courts cannot order compensation for sanctioned Russian companies or individuals if sanctions have made it impossible to carry out a deal or contract.
The EU’s latest sanctions packages also included a range of additional safeguards to let those who uphold sanctions recover damages incurred by doing so, as well as to allow countries to counter abusive Russian judgments with their own injunctions and penalties.
That said, getting rid of a bilateral investment treaty is quite straightforward. Although one treaty can vary from another, they tend to allow for termination by one side simply giving 12 months’ notice.
There is an argument that it is “simply the right thing to do,” said Juraj Majcin, an analyst with the European Policy Center think tank in Brussels.
Under international law, Russia’s expropriations could be considered a justification to render the treaties null and void.
Majcin noted that the world has moved in a more geopolitical and geoeconomic direction since the early 1990s, meaning that countries are more willing to use the law and economic strength not only to advance their own political interests, but also to demand submission from smaller states.
Keeping the treaties in place in that context now means “we give these countries weapons they can use against us.”
But given that the practical effect of the treaties is essentially suspended, Majcin said that the move would be “mostly symbolic.”
Once a bilateral investment treaty is terminated, it generally contains a so-called “sunset clause” that protects investments made from the time the treaty was in force for an additional 15 years, further suggesting that there might not be an immediate change after a joint termination.
But one EU diplomat said that “the sooner these agreements are terminated, the sooner the so-called sunset clause… will expire.”
Depending on what the EU countries agree on, there might even be a way to cut the sunset clauses.
Majcin mentioned that under international law, Russia’s expropriations could be considered a justification to render the treaties null and void.
Specifically, Article 60 of the U.N.’s 1969 Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties reads that “a material breach of a bilateral treaty by one of the parties entitles the other to invoke the breach as a ground for terminating the treaty or suspending its operation in whole or in part.”
EU countries have not yet established which legal reasoning they should adopt, or even a fixed timeframe for discussing how and when they should terminate their treaties.
But a first step toward addressing the question will be taken on Sept. 2, when EU foreign ministers are set to discuss frozen assets in Dublin, following Sweden’s call.
Note from the author:
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