Recital 13

(13) Decision (CFSP) 2025/1495 amends the conditions for imposing a transaction ban on persons, entities or bodies established outside Russia that use the System for Transfer of Financial Messages (SPFS) of the Central Bank of Russia or equivalent specialised financial messaging services set up by the Central Bank of Russia. This is due to the fact that SPFS was set up by Russia as an alternative to a specialised financial messaging service established in the Union and to shield its banks from the impact of restrictive measures that the Union and its allies have adopted since 2014 in response to Russian actions undermining the territorial integrity of Ukraine. The Council considers that, by expanding the use of SPFS outside its territory, Russia seeks to further pursue that strategy and to protect its international trade from the impact of Union restrictive measures, thereby increasing its financial resilience and providing opportunities to facilitate the circumvention of the prohibitions in Regulation (EU) No 833/2014 and Council Regulation (EU) No 269/2014 (6).

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Source: EUR-Lex (Cellar) · retrieved 2026-10-16 · Text as adopted (Official Journal); later amendments are not incorporated in this text.