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International Sanctions and EU Restrictive Measures

Selected-e-articles

Abstract: The European Union (EU) has been more incensed over Russian aggression towards Ukraine in 2022, when compared to Russia's invasion of Crimea in 2014. This article questions this shift by looking at the EU's sanctions towards Russia. It argues that the relative unwillingness of the European Commission, and accordingly the imbalance or lopsided distribution of power within and amongst the relevant EU institutions, was one of the factors internal to the EU that prevented an effective response in 2014. Although external and contextual factors have been crucial, the EU has adopted harsher sanctions against Russia since 2022 because the Commission is not unwilling to act as it was in 2014, and dissenting members have found it difficult to obstruct the process in the Council of the EU. This article also extends the analytical repertoire of the bureaucratic politics model by demonstrating that it retains explanatory power even when the traditional parameters remain constant over time.

Abstract: In response to Russia’s full-scale invasion and gross violations of human rights in Ukraine, the EU has adopted no less than ten sanctions packages in the first year alone. Yet none of the targetted persons and entities were blacklisted under the Global Human Rights Sanctions Regime (GHRSR). This relatively new thematic sanctions tool, which is also known as the ‘EU’s Magnitsky Act’, aims precisely at targeting the most serious of human rights violations and abuses worldwide, including genocide and crimes against humanity, the proof of which has —literally— been piling up in Ukraine. This raises the question whether the GHRSR is fit for purpose.

Abstract: This article examines the legal requirements for a listing on the so-called European Union (EU) terror list, an aspect that remains underdeveloped in both legal scholarship and policy debates on counter-terrorism measures. The analysis elucidates the substantive requirements governing listings on the EU terror list and applies them to the case of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. It highlights the two-tiered nature of the EU terror listing process, in which an EU terror listing relies on a national authority’s decision regarding the potential target. Furthermore, an analysis of recent Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) case-law outlines prospective developments in the Court of Justice’s scrutiny of restrictive measures. It will be shown that the CJEU exercises judicial deference in its examination of restrictive measures adopted by the Council, particularly in cases involving threats to the EU’s legal and democratic order or international security orchestrated by foreign state actors.

Abstract: The European Union (EU) adopts restrictive measures – or sanctions – as part of its counterterrorism strategy. These measures restrict the fundamental rights of the natural or legal persons they target and can be challenged in front of the General Court or the European Court of Justice (the CJEU).Drawing from both legal scholarship and security studies, this article refines an analytical framework that enables an original analysis of the case law of the CJEU: we focus on ‘proximity’, an element so far neglected in the analysis of counter-terrorism sanctions. Proximity is the variable measuring the distance between the addressee of a measure from the actual commission of a terrorist act. Such a variable provides the analytical framework through which to test the hypotheses and findings proposed in the last decade by previous studies.

Abstract: The European Union (EU) has responded to the Russian invasion of Ukraine (2022 – ongoing) with several packages of sanctions. Of those packages, only three – rather late and limited in scope – contain measures on energy. By focusing on the negotiation and adoption of energy-related restrictive measures, this article aims to assess the EU actorness in the international arena. It argues that the variety of preferences across the member states impact on the ability of the EU to impose sanctions against Russia and, in turn, on its role as an actor beyond its borders. (…)

Abstract: Malicious cyber activities are on the rise. States and other relevant actors need to constantly adapt to the evolving cyber threat landscape, including by setting up effective deterrence mechanisms. This is what the European Union (EU) has done through the adoption of Common Foreign and Security Policy (CFSP) Decision 2019/797, which allows it to impose targeted sanctions to deter and respond to cyberattacks that constitute an external threat to the EU or its member states. However, in contrast to other horizontal regimes of restrictive measures in force within the EU, foreign governments are not included as potential targets of cyber sanctions. (…)

Abstract: At their inception in the early 1990s, conditionality clauses were introduced in the General Scheme of Preferences (GSP) as an instrument for the protection and promotion of labour standards and human rights in the Global South. Conditionality in the GSP as an instrument of development and trade policy was conceived as separate from foreign policy tools in the context of the Common Foreign and Security Policy (CFSP). Notwithstanding the very limited suspension practice, previous research highlighted indications of political contamination in withdrawal decisions. This article explores the question as to whether GSP withdrawals are becoming more similar to CFSP sanctions. Relying primarily on policy documents and legislation, the article discusses the evolution of GSP conditionality from its origins to present, including the proposal for a new Regulation governing the GSP tabled by the Commission in July 2021 and currently under consideration. With this aim in mind, it first outlines the evolution of the design of withdrawal mechanisms, taking issue with the changing focus of the GSP conditionality, which has expanded considerably while withdrawal practice remains marginal. Following that, the implications of the identified trend(s) for the European Union (EU) are teased out.

Abstract: In the wake of unsettling conflicts and democratic backsliding, states and organisations increasingly respond with sanctions. The European Union (EU) is one of them: Brussels makes use of the entire toolbox in its foreign policy, and its sanctions appear in different forms--diplomatic measures, travel bans, financial bans, or various forms of economic restrictions. Yet, there is little debate between different strands in the literature on EU sanctions, in particular concerning measures under the Common Foreign and Security Policy and those pertaining to the development and trade policy fields. Our thematic issue addresses this research gap by assembling a collection of articles investigating the design, impact, and implementation of EU sanctions used in different realms of its external affairs. Expanding the definition of EU sanctions to measures produced under different guises in the development, trade, and foreign policy fields, the collection overcomes the compartmentalised approach characterising EU scholarship.

Abstract: The implementation of European Union (EU) policies has been investigated for several policy areas, but Decisions made under the Common Foreign and Security Policy (CFSP) have rarely been considered. While many CFSP measures are appli‐ cable throughout the EU without the need for further action on the domestic level, some Decisions must be implemented by Council Regulations. These Council Regulations adopted with the intent to implement CFSP Decisions have qualities of Directives, which delegate implementing tasks to member states and require transposition. The aim of this article is to investigate whether restrictive measures imposed by the EU are uniformly implemented across the member states, and, if not, to what extent implementation performance varies. We observe significant differences in implementation perfor‐ mance across member states. The findings of this article are twofold. First, we claim that implementation and compliance studies should involve CFSP decisions more systematically. Second, empirical confirmation is provided of how uneven trans‐ position and application occurs also in CFSP matters. This study is based on empirical work that consisted of desk research and semi‐structured interviews with national competent authorities of 21 EU member states taking place between March 2020 and January 2021.

Abstract: The European Union (EU) states in its 2016 Global Strategy that it intends to be a “responsible global stakeholder” and to “act worldwide to address the core causes of war and poverty, as well as to promote the indivisibility and universal‐ ity of human rights” (European Union Global Strategy, 2016, pp. 5–8, 18). However, the Global Strategy is silent on the credentials or prerequisites that give the EU the authority to act globally and address conflicts and violations of human rights, including through the use of sanctions against non‐EU states. How far the EU has the authority to use sanctions, which are essentially coercive measures, is especially relevant when the EU resorts to unilateral sanctions based on obli‐ gations owed erga omnes, namely measures without explicit United Nations Security Council authorisation and based on obligations owed to the international community as a whole. Drawing on Habermas’s theory of communicative action, this article introduces an analytical framework—the “moral dimension” of EU authority—which maps the substantive and procedural standards to guide the assessment of whether the EU has the appropriate credentials to qualify as an author‐ ity with the right to intervene forcibly into the internal affairs of non‐EU states. The analytical value of the framework is examined empirically in the case study of the EU’s restrictive measures (sanctions) imposed in response to state violence against anti‐government protests in Uzbekistan in 2005.

Abstract:: The European Union, the United Nations, and the United States frequently use economic sanctions. This article introduces the EUSANCT Dataset—which amends, merges, and updates some of the most widely used sanctions databases—to trace the evolution of sanctions after the Cold War. The dataset contains case-level and dyadic information on 326 threatened and imposed sanctions by the EU, the UN, and the US. We show that the usage and overall success of sanctions have not grown from 1989 to 2015 and that while the US is the most active sanctioner, the EU and the UN appear more successful.

Abstract: Strategic deterrence through the use of sanctions in the international system is gaining support among major players. This is despite widespread scepticism over the instrument's efficacy, as seen by the widespread opposition to its use immediately following its implementation in Iraq in the immediate aftermath of the end of the Cold War. The takeover of Ukraine is the first opportunity since World War II to analyse the results of sanctions on a major power and permanent member of the UN Security Council. The issue raises the question of whether or not sanctions on Russia would be an effective strategy in stopping their aggressiveness in Ukraine. In this article, we analyse how targeted sanctions against Russia's economy can alter the course of the conflict in Ukraine. 

Abstract:: The European Union (EU) has been using economic sanctions both as a foreign policy tool and as a liberal alternative to military action. Since 2006, it has been implementing general sanctions against the whole economy of Iran, affecting their trade relations, and since 2007, following the imposition of sanctions by the UN Security Council, it has also been using smart sanctions targeting Iranian entities and natural persons associated with the country's military activities. In a nonlinear autoregressive distributed lag (NARDL) model, this paper investigates the impact of general and targeted EU sanctions against Iran on quarterly bilateral trade values between the 19 members of the euro area (EA19) and Iran between the first quarter of 1999 and the fourth quarter of 2018. In a robustness NARDL specification, trade between Iran and the 28 members of the EU is analysed. In addition, a gravity model of bilateral trade between Iran and the EU member states is run in a robustness check. The results indicate that the EU's general sanctions have strongly hampered trade flows between the two trading partners in almost all sectors, except for the primary sectors. Furthermore, our study finds that the impact of smart sanctions targeting Iranian entities and natural persons is much smaller than the impact of general sanctions on total trade values and the trade values of many sectors. Smart sanctions affect the exports of most sectors from the EA19 and the EU28 to Iran, while they are statistically insignificant for the imports of many sectors from Iran. Thus, this paper provides evidence of the motivations behind smart sanctions, which target specific individuals and entities rather than the whole economy, unlike general sanctions, which have a negative impact on ordinary people.

Abstract:: This article studies the case of the sanctions against the Russian war on the Ukraine in 2022 against the background of four major and well-documented historical sanction episodes: (1) the anti-Apartheid sanctions of the 1980s, (2) the sanctions against the Iraqi occupation of Kuwait in 1990, (3) the sanctions against Iranian nuclear capabilities and (4) the US and EU sanctions against the Russian annexation of the Crimea. Two cases (South Africa and Iran) have a comparatively low probability of success based on pre-sanction trade linkage between sender and target and the target’s regime type (the autocracy score). The key to understanding their success is in the banking channel (debt-crisis and international payment system sanctions) and the behaviour of the private sector (divestment and over-compliance). The failure of the sanctions against Iraq underscores the importance of regime type and the need for a viable exit strategy and shows that some decision-makers cannot be influenced with economic hardship. The 2014 sanctions against Russia illustrate the comparative vulnerability of the European democracies and their weakness in organizing comprehensive sanctions that bite. Given the increased Russian resilience, the increasingly autocratic nature of President Putin’s government, the credibility of his 2014 tit-for-tat strategy and the failure of European democracies to implement appropriate strong and broad-based measures, smart and targeted sanctions are unlikely to influence the Kremlin’s calculus. The European Union could only influence that calculus by restoring its reputation as a credible applicant of strong sanctions, including an embargo on capital goods and a boycott of Russian energy.

Abstract: This article contributes to the ongoing discussion on the use of sanctions as a coercive tool of international policymaking, focusing on the economic effects of the sanctions on Russia following its invasion of Ukraine. Using CGE modelling, we explore the short- to medium-term economic effects of a possible trade embargo by Allied countries imposed on Russia. We consider the Allied trade embargo as a set of comprehensive trade sanctions that include (i) import-related measures, (ii) export-related measures, (iii) FDI-related measures and (iv) increased trade costs between Russia and non-Allies. We find that Russia would sustain sizable losses upwards of 14% of real GDP from an Allied trade embargo, even in the short run. Allied economies are unevenly affected by the sanctions, with real GDP losses between 0.1% and 1.6%. Non-Allied economies benefit from some trade diversion but experience even larger losses from the increased costs of trading and doing business with Russia. China joining the embargo resulted in greater economic losses for Russia; Allied economies and China would be adversely affected by this move. Finally, Russia would suffer significantly higher losses if it were enacting countersanctions, rather than resigning itself to being a sanction target.

Abstract: The research features the theoretical (legal) and practical aspects of EU’s export control over the dual-use goods circulation as a sanction measure against Russia in 2014–2022. It gives a brief overview of the common EU approach to the dualuse goods export control. The authors focus on the special sanctions regime against Russia in this sphere, i.e., its legal basis, content, development, and implementation. The article introduces a comparative analysis of restrictions in the sphere of dual-use goods circulation before and after the tightening of EU sanctions in February-March 2022. The theory is illustrated by several court cases against individuals suspected of violating the sanctions regime. Based on the available EU statistics for 2013–2021, the authors analyzed the impact of the sanctions on cooperation between the EU and Russia in the sphere of dual-use goods export. Restrictive measures in the sphere of export control are a unique case of using Common Foreign and Security Policy (CFSP) instruments in the context of implementing the principles of the EU Common Commercial Policy (CCP).

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