Hungary loses court fight over profits from frozen Russian assets

The European Union’s General Court has thrown out Hungary’s legal challenge against the bloc’s decision to channel profits from frozen Russian central bank assets toward Ukraine’s military support. The ruling, handed down on September 9, removes one of the legal obstacles to the EU’s strategy of turning Moscow’s own money against it. Hungary had argued that its voting rights were violated when a European Peace Facility committee allocated the first tranche of extraordinary revenues from immobilized Russian assets to support Ukraine. The court didn’t even get to the merits of that argument, ruling instead that it simply lacked jurisdiction over matters falling under the EU’s Common Foreign and Security Policy. What the court actually decided The EU’s Common Foreign and Security Policy, known as CFSP, occupies a peculiar zone in European law. It’s one of the few areas where EU courts have traditionally declined to exercise judicial review, treating foreign policy and defense decisions as the domain of member states acting collectively rather than something judges should second-guess. Hungary’s lawyers tried to argue around that limitation, framing the case as a procedural rights issu...