The European Union’s most potent geopolitical weapon is arguably its sanctions, otherwise known as restrictive measures. Here’s how the EU imposes them.
Sanctions are all over the news at the moment. European Union officials are currently putting together the 19th package of sanctions against Russia, while yesterday the European Commission announced its plan to sanction Israel.
These are not decisions that the EU institutions take lightly by any means, as sanctions completely change the tone of a country’s relationship with the Union. Soft-power diplomacy is heavily undermined, economic perks like trade deals are shelved and any other benefits of being friends with Brussels evaporate.
Being sanctioned by the bloc also has a wider spillover effect, as where the EU leads, others often follow. All of the countries vying to become an EU member, as well as some of its closer partners, are systematically invited to adopt sanction decisions at the same time.
In some cases, it is easy to become a pariah in a very short period of time. Hence the actual point of imposing sanctions, they are meant to change behaviours.
In Russia’s case, the sanctions are in their 19th edition as the war in Ukraine – deemed illegal under international law – has been going on for 11 years, while the invasion is into its third year. Moscow has been hit hard but for various complicated reasons, the bite of sanctions has been an acceptable pain to bear.
Israel, meanwhile, is in the crosshairs because of its ongoing operations in Gaza. The Commission has proposed sanctioning some of the country’s members of government and violent settlers in the West Bank, who are breaching international law.
There are a number of ways to sanction targeted individuals, groups or companies, including travel bans, the freezing of assets and prohibiting EU citizens, businesses and entities from making funds available to listed individuals.
Typically, sanctions are launched according to the following process: the head of EU foreign policy, the high-representative, will make a proposal to sanction an individual, entity or country. The Commission is involved when the sanctions include financial measures.
This plan is then analysed by the Council’s relevant working group or groups before being presented to national diplomats once it has been fine-tuned.
After some back and forth, the plan can then be put to the European Council itself, where unanimity is required to sign it into law.
This is where the EU has struggled to make its sanctions as effective as possible, as some countries have refused to back certain restrictive measures.
For the Russia sanctions, for example, countries like Hungary and Slovakia refused to allow sanctions on certain energy companies to proceed, as they were heavily dependent on those exports.
A similar situation is likely to be the case for the Commission’s Israel sanctions plan, as a number of countries, including Germany and Italy, have indicated little willingness to go down this path as of yet.
This is where negotiations behind closed doors between national diplomats in the Coreper groups play their part, as sanctions are often a case of horse trading and quid pro quo that bring in other unrelated national interests as part of the bargaining.
External pressure also eventually tells. Some of the entities and industries that are regularly sanctioned as part of the Russia process were thought to be off limits in earlier packages, but as the Kremlin’s brutality continued, that willingness to play rougher also grew in the EU.
