The European Council has adopted, unanimously, restrictive measures under Article 215 TFEU. All sovereign US Treasury holdings, Federal Reserve correspondent accounts and US government-controlled dollar clearing within EU jurisdiction are frozen with immediate effect.
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@EUCouncil · 20 Jan 2026 · 12:22
28K replies
Let me get this straight. WE are the aggressor, but THEY froze the savings of a country of 340 million people over an island of 56,000?
I have been talked down to about Europe my whole life. Explain to me how that is the proportionate one.
Deb — genuinely, not fighting — they did not freeze your savings. They froze government accounts. Your money is fine and nobody in Brussels wants it.
And the "island of 56,000" is a country's territory. That is the whole point. Small is exactly why it mattered. If size decides, then my country is next in some other argument, and there are 1.3 million of us.
Nine person machine shop in Pennsylvania. I import a part from Stuttgart every six weeks.
My bank returned the payment this afternoon. Not blocked, not sanctioned — a compliance officer somewhere decided not to risk it.
That is forty percent of my order book sitting on a shelf in Germany. I am not a geopolitical actor. I make brackets.
This is the mechanism, right here, in one shop.
Sanctions almost never bite because of the rule. They bite because ten thousand compliance officers all decide independently not to risk it, and there is no appeal against a decision nobody formally made.
I am sorry about your brackets. I mean that.
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Read that again slowly.
The European Union has frozen the sovereign assets of the issuer of the world's reserve currency.
I have taught this as a thought experiment for eleven years. I used it to illustrate why it would never happen.
EC
European Council
@EUCouncil
·20 Jan 2026 · 12:22
The European Council has adopted, unanimously, restrictive measures under Article 215 TFEU. All sovereign US Treasury holdings, Federal Reserve correspondent accounts and US government-controlled dollar clearing within E…
What was happening
20 January 2026 · in the recordEurope freezes the dollarTwenty-seven member states invoke Article 215 against the issuer of the reserve currency. Treasury holdings, Federal Reserve correspondent accounts, and dollar clearing inside EU j…