MEPs from the European Parliament’s main political groups called on Wednesday 9 November for additional EU sanctions against the Iranian regime.
In an urgently convened debate, representatives of the EPP, David Lega (Swedish), S&D, Pedro Marques (Portuguese), and Greens/EFA, Hannah Neumann (German), called for sanctions against Iranian parliamentarians who voted to apply the death penalty to peaceful protesters who were arrested. “We are talking about more than 1,400 people, we must act so that they are saved, so that the country is free and democratic”, Lega stressed.
Hannah Neumann, like Hermann Tertsch (ECR, Spanish), called for the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps to be classified as a terrorist organisation.
For Renew Europe, Bart Groothuis (Dutch) also called for a ban on the export of dual-use goods to Iran and to ensure that Iranian “war criminals” are sent to the International Criminal Court. Özlem Demirel (The Left, German) also called for sanctions against the Iranian regime.
Foreign ministers are expected to discuss the situation in the country on Monday 14 November and “will look at different options, including restrictive measures”, European Commission executive president Valdis Dombrovskis said during the debate.
Earlier in the afternoon, the President of the European Council, Charles Michel, announced that Member States were continuing to work on implementing additional sanctions. “It is essential that the leaders of the European Union are vigorously and with a large majority mobilised both to condemn in the strongest possible terms the repression of peaceful demonstrators and to highlight and salute the extraordinary courage of these women, these young girls”, he added. (Original version in French by Camille-Cerise Gessant)