Comparative study on best practices for a stronger EU sanction enforcement

Restrictive measures (sanctions) are an essential tool for the promotion of the objectives of the Common Foreign and Security Policy. Their objectives include safeguarding the Union’s values, maintaining international peace and security, consolidating and supporting democracy, the rule of law and human rights. The sanctions remain the main instrument in the Union’s toolbox to deter, prevent and condemn aggressive and illiberal behaviour of the third countries.

Considering that the lack of sanction implementation, as well as inconsistencies across different jurisdictions of the Union, also represent a risk to Union financial interests and to the national financial systems, it is important to make sure that the Union sanctions are implemented equally across the Union. This is particularly relevant for the implementation of the Union sanctions against Russia, which have been subsequently adopted starting from 2014. In order to curb circumvention of Union sanctions and assist the Member States in their sanction implementation tasks, this pilot project concerns a study on the best practices and synergies that would benefit the Union’s sanction policy, taking stock of the examples of the United States’ Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) and the United Kingdom sanctions enforcement authority (OFSI).

This would help to identify similarities, disparities, best practices and missing elements across all the jurisdictions of the Union. Considering that each Member State nominates a very different set and number of national authorities for the enforcement of Union sanctions (currently at least 160 officially designated), it would be useful to see to what extent having a centralised sanction implementation body would benefit Union sanction implementation, as compared to a network of scattered national bodies. Such a study would help to identify a way for reducing ‘avoidable’ sanction evasion, namely in terms of asset freeze and confiscation and visa and travel bans.