Italy’s central bank governor, Fabio Panetta, has warned the European Union that using the euro as a weapon could reduce its appeal and support other currencies. The publication reports that Finance Times (FT).
As the publication wrote, in this way Panetta sent “a thinly veiled warning about EU plans to seize profits from Russian financial assets in Europe.”
He said international relations were part of a “repeated game” so weaponizing a currency “inevitably reduces its attractiveness and encourages the emergence of alternatives.”
The Italian central bank governor said the increasing use of the yuan to finance trade between China and Russia was “instructive in this respect” as Beijing encouraged the use of the yuan in countries affected by international sanctions. China’s share of yuan-denominated trade has doubled in the past three years, helping the Chinese currency overtake the euro as the world’s second most used currency in trade, he said.
As the FT noted, Panetta did not specifically mention the EU’s plans to transfer €210 billion in proceeds from Russian assets frozen in Europe since 2022 to Ukraine, but officials said his comments were made with those plans in mind.
Previously Russian Ambassador to Washington Anatoly Antonov statedThat other states should consider abandoning the US dollar due to the threat of seizure of Russian assets.
Previously at the European Commission named The amount of Russian sovereign assets frozen in the European Union.