On Tuesday 14 March, the Court of Justice of the European Union concluded that in periods of armed conflict the armed forces can be charged with having carried out act of terrorism and, consequently, can be subject to restrictive measures under Common Foreign and Security Policy (CFSP).
The question was unclear about whether activities carried out by the armed forces involved in an armed conflict can be described as terrorist acts. Several international conventions effectively excluded this possibility, including the Council of Europe Convention on the Prevention of Terrorism and the Raad van State (Dutch State Council), which went to the Court Justice in this case and called for “this international consensus” to be followed.
The Court ultimately decided otherwise in this case (C-158/14) on the restrictive measures adopted by the EU against the “Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam” (LTTE), which carried out a civil war against the Sri Lankan government. The Courts concluded that certain LTTE acts could be described as acts of terrorism so that the Union would be in a position to freeze the financial resources of several people associated with these armed forces.
The Court’s reasons are based on the legal acts adopted by the EU following the attacks on 11 September 2001 in the US (common position 2001/931/CFSP and regulation 2580/2001) that seek to prevent terrorist acts and the observation that, “International humanitarian law pursues different aims from EU law.”
The Court also considers that customary international law does not prevent actions by armed forces during periods of armed conflict from constituting ‘terrorist acts’ but cannot prevent states from carrying this out. (Original version in French by Jan Kordys)