Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán has instructed his finance minister and the governor of the Hungarian Central Bank to draw up plans to remove Hungary's foreign currency reserves from Belgium if the frozen Russian assets are seized, Bloomberg reports on Wednesday.
"If it is possible to remove the Russian reserves, what if it were decided that they could also use the Hungarian reserves," Orbán told reporters.
The leaders of the 27 EU Member States will discuss the future financing of Ukraine in Brussels on Thursday.
On the table is a proposal for a rebalancing of the frozen Russian assets. These are mainly stored in Belgium at the securities firm Euroclear, which makes Prime Minister Bart De Wever's (N-VA) government very wary of the financial and legal risks.
On Friday, Belgium received support for this plea from Italy, the third-largest European economy, Bulgaria and Malta.
An in-depth explainer on everything to know about Russia's frozen assets ahead of the EU summit on Thursday can be found here.
