On Thursday 14 March, the European Parliament called on the EU Council to develop “rapidly” an “autonomous, flexible and responsive” sanctions regime at EU level, “which would make it possible to target individuals, state or non-state actors and any other entity responsible for or involved in grave human rights violations”.
Such a horizontal sanctions regime is currently being discussed in the EU Council at expert level, and MEPs hope that the discussions will be “crowned with success with the end of the current legislature”. The adoption of such a regime requires the unanimous agreement of all 28 Member States.
In a joint resolution by the Greens/EFA, EPP, ECR, ALDE and S&D, adopted by 447 votes to 70 with 46 abstentions, MEPs believe that such a regime should cover persons or entities who have contributed physically, financially or through acts of systemic corruption, to such abuse and crimes, worldwide. According to the Parliament, the future sanctions regime must be “coherent and complementary” to the horizontal or country-specific restrictive measures in place at EU level and must complement and be fully compatible with the existing international sanctions framework, in particular in relation to the United Nations Security Council.
The Parliament also wants the new sanctions instrument to be designed in such a way that the imposition of human rights sanctions can be adopted by a qualified majority in the EU Council.
According to MEPs, this sanctions regime would strengthen the EU's role as a global human rights actor and should symbolically be named after Sergei Magnitsky (see EUROPE 12183/21). Giving the regime the name of this Russian lawyer, who died in 2009 in detention as a result of torture, seems to be a matter of debate among the Member States and neither the High Representative, Federica Mogherini, nor the Commissioner for Neighbourhood Policy, Johannes Hahn, who spoke on her behalf during the debate in plenary on 12 March, referred to this regime by linking it to Mr. Magnitsky.
“A possible EU global human rights sanctions regime is an interesting, necessary but also a complex issue that merits further consideration”, Hahn told MEPs.
In his view, several questions arise, including the added value of such a regime in advancing the realisation of human rights and preventing gross human rights violations, the scope of such a regime and the type of violations that would fall within its scope. “Should such a regime, for example, focus on gross and systematic human rights violations? Should it cover violations of international humanitarian law? Should it address cases of corruption?”, he wondered. The question of the interaction between this regime and other existing EU sanctions regimes - geographical - but also the regimes established at UN and national level also arises, according to the Commissioner. He also recalled that an entry on the sanctions lists must be supported by solid and open source evidence in order to be confirmed, in the event of prosecution, by the Court of Justice of the EU. (Original version in French by Camille-Cerise Gessant)