The Italian group UniCredit withdrew its lawsuit against the European Central Bank (ECB), which demanded the cancellation of the regulator's directive to leave Russia. This became known from the ruling of the EU Court on April 9, 2026.

According to the document, UniCredit notified the court of its withdrawal from the lawsuit on January 29, 2026. In this regard, the case was removed from the register. The court ruled that the bank must pay both its own legal costs and those of the ECB, including expenses related to precautionary measures.

The court proceedings between UniCredit and the ECB have been ongoing since June 2024: the bank filed a lawsuit demanding the annulment of the regulator's decision dated April 22, 2024, which established additional requirements for reducing risks associated with activities in Russia. The organization claimed that the ECB's actions violate property rights, freedom of business, and exceed the regulator's authority. In particular, the April regulator's ruling prohibited the bank from issuing or extending loans in the Russian Federation starting June 1, 2024, as well as attracting deposits from Russian clients. According to this ruling, the bank was also to cease servicing transfers of Russian clients in euros, dollars, pounds sterling, yuan, and some other currencies starting September 1, 2024. At the same time, UniCredit petitioned for the application of protective measures, but in November 2024, the court rejected this request.

Difficult exit

UniCredit has been trying to exit its business in Russia for several years, but the process is complicated by the need to simultaneously comply with the requirements of both European regulators and Russian authorities.

Speaking at the ECB's banking supervision forum in November 2025, the bank's head Andrea Orcel emphasized that compliance with sanctions is an extremely difficult task: "The problem with Russia for us is to maneuver between sanctions… Russia has 15,000 sanctions… and they are all different, so managing this is a galactic compliance effort… it is a huge challenge." Moreover, according to him, the second key risk is the possibility of forced expropriation of the business: "The second challenge, at least for us, is to avoid nationalization."

The bank, according to Orcel, is forced to act as cautiously as possible to avoid giving grounds for such measures. "Russia is waiting for us to make mistakes to justify nationalization. We are very carefully monitoring to avoid such mistakes, because it would mean handing over 3.8 billion euros in capital on a platter… I am not going to do that," he stated.

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