The widely known and
reported fact that approximately 300 billion EUR of Russian assets have been
frozen in the EU’s Central Securities Depositories (‘CSD’), in particular in
Euroclear and Clearstream, has prompted many questions as to whether creditors with
a title can take their benefit from this temporally indefinite concentration of
such vast amounts at Euroclear to obtain satisfaction of their claims. This
seemingly straightforward question reveals more nuanced complexities of EU
restrictive measures, the role and structure of financial intermediaries and
CSD, as well as pressing questions of foreign sovereign immunity and EU public
policy. The paper attempts to clearly dissect the various factors that drive
the analysis and to take into account the EU’s geo-economic context and
(public) policy interests.