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Austrian Chancellor Karl Nehammer believes that the decision to transfer frozen Russian assets to help Ukraine should be made in court, he said while talking to reporters after the EU summit in Brussels on Friday.
"Austria takes an unequivocal legal position. To confiscate assets is one thing and to use confiscated assets is another. This will require a court decision in some form. Europe has committed itself to the rule of law," the Chancellor said. He added that the Council of Ministers of Justice is discussing how to tackle the issue.
According to Nehammer, one should not abandon these principles "even when the aggressor violates the law."
"In order to use these assets for other purposes, a clear legal process is needed, best of all if a court decision allows this to be done," the politician said.
Nehammer noted that such a procedure would allow persons and entities whose assets were frozen to also participate in the process.
On Friday, head of the European Council Charles Michel said that the European Union should consider using Russia's frozen assets to help Ukraine. According to him, this issue may be raised at the international conference on assistance to Ukraine, which is to be held on October 25 in Germany.
"Not very long in the future, anybody, realistically, is going to be asking what are the improvements that are visible that the IRS is making now that we've provided funds. People think the IRS [is] like a machine that runs by itself. It doesn't. They'll do the same thing tomorrow that they did today. But that's not what's expected when you provide a large increase in funding, and the funding was put there to improve performance."Republicans in Congress have already vowed to reverse the $80 billion budget infusion the IRS received from Democrats' reconciliation bill this summer, questioning the agency's promise to target "wealthy tax cheats" only.
Comment: Trying to stop violence by removing the weapons available just shifts the violence towards different and more available means. So while this may have the effect of reducing handgun violence it doesn't mean it will reduce violence overall.
Also, considering the greater context of the shift of Western governments towards ever more totalitarian proclivities and policies it isn't at all obvious that this ban is about gun violence at all. It's possible that the ban is intended to further restrict the ability of Canadians to defend themselves and resist tyrannical encroachment.