The European Union’s top diplomat makes the case for sanctions to protect global peace.
When Russia started to prepare for its 2022 full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Europe unambiguously told Russian President Vladimir Putin that, were he to invade the country, there would be serious consequences. Sanctions have been one of these main consequences: We at the European Union have already adopted 14 sanctions packages against Russia since February 2022.
Putin’s Russia is behaving with a 19th-century style imperialist mindset, threatening its neighbors—most notably in Europe. However, this is not just about an existential threat to Europe’s security. Russia’s blatant violation of the United Nations Charter also threatens global peace.
From energy and food security threats and the violation of the U.N.’s arms embargo on North Korea to military cooperation with Iran and the use of brutal paramilitary groups in African countries, Russia’s actions deliberately destabilize the global architecture for peace. If Russia were to succeed in Ukraine, it would open the door to the return of imperialist wars of aggression against weaker neighbors on every continent.
That is exactly what an overwhelming majority of U.N. member states understood back in March 2022 and again in February 2023, when they demanded Russia to withdraw all military forces from the territory of Ukraine. That is the mandate that our sanctions are enforcing. When other alternatives cannot work, sanctions are a responsible and effective tool to protect international peace and security.
For us, sanctions are not an end in themselves. Whether adopted by the U.N. Security Council or autonomously by us within Europe, sanctions are, in our view, always a measure of last resort when other diplomatic efforts have failed to achieve a positive result.
U.N. sanctions are and will always be the best option. Yet at a time when Russia, both aggressor and judge, is blocking the U.N. Security Council’s collective response to many global security challenges, autonomous EU sanctions are an effective way to strengthen the U.N.’s mandate on peace and security.
The European Union counts on the support of several partners in our use of sanctions on Russia. Around a quarter of the world’s nations have also imposed such sanctions. Admittedly, not everyone is willing or capable to follow suit. We understand that. However, circumvention of our sanctions would affect all countries by helping Russia to continue its blatant violation of the U.N. Charter. Therefore, we are asking all countries to help prevent the circumvention of these sanctions. By doing so, they will actively contribute to a more peaceful and secure world.
We are also asking all U.N. members to help ensure that the weapons and the technologies needed to wage Putin’s illegal war do not end up in the battlefields of Ukraine, destroying its schools and killing its civilians. If countries are delivering weapons to help Russia wage its illegal war—as North Korea did with ammunition, other weapon systems, and now even soldiers, and Iran is believed to have done with the delivery of drones and more recently, ballistic missiles—then the EU and other countries will respond with the imposition of specific sanctions.
Some of the loudest critics of our sanctions are often the most prominent transgressors of international law. Most of them, such as North Korea, have long been the targets of U.N. sanctions themselves. The campaign spread by Russia and its supporters to label autonomous sanctions as illegitimate “unilateral coercive measures” is a politically motivated attempt to divert attention away from the reasons why these sanctions have been imposed. This campaign is also based on massive disinformation—for example, the claim that that sanctions would hurt human rights and cause food and medical shortages.
EU sanctions only apply within the jurisdiction of the EU. They therefore represent an exercise of sovereign right, embedded in international law and in line with the U.N. Charter’s goals to protect international peace and security. These sanctions respect the listed persons’ legal rights, including due process and the scrutiny of the Court of Justice of the European Union, whereby listed individuals and entities can challenge their designation.
That contrasts with Russia and other states that adopt sanctions against individuals with an absolute lack of transparency and without any right for due process, in a context where the rule of law and people’s rights are not respected anyway.
We are, of course, always alert to unintended consequences that sanctions could have for the civilian population. The delivery of humanitarian aid, food, medicine, or other emergency supplies are always exempted from our sanctions legislation. And sanctions have never prevented us from supporting the U.N.’s efforts to alleviate human suffering and ensuring that help arrives to those who are in most need, including in countries where sanctions are in place, such as Syria.
In this respect, the adoption of U.N. Security Council Resolution 2664 in December 2022 increased legal clarity by providing a standing humanitarian exemption to U.N. sanctions. The EU and its member states moved quickly to include exemptions based on the U.N. model in our sanctions regimes.
This resolution has helped put the spotlight on dictators who block humanitarian access to vulnerable populations and use it as a bargaining chip to maintain power. Thanks to this resolution, they have no shelter anymore to blame sanctions for their own atrocities and corruption. We hear from leading humanitarian organizations that this resolution has already had a positive impact on the ground.
Transborder terrorism, threats to the territorial integrity of nations, nuclear proliferation, human rights violations, genocide—there are many challenges where a global response is needed. Not surprisingly, it is frequently human rights defenders and civil society entities that call for sanctions to be imposed to address a deteriorating situation, such as the war in Sudan, various conflicts in the Middle East, or to prevent interferences with the electoral process in Guatemala. When states, individuals, or entities engage in widespread and systematic human rights violations, sanctions become a powerful tool to put offenders on the spotlight and press them to cease in their offenses.
In this context, EU member states have been supportive of my recent proposals in crises other than Russia’s war of aggression against Ukraine, including in Sudan and the Middle East, where we adopted sanctions against Hamas and the Palestinian Islamic Jihad and against violent Israeli settlers for serious human rights abuses against Palestinians.
By taking decisive action against its financing, the global fight against terrorism has made great strides. In disrupting the financial networks that terrorists rely on, sanctions have made the world a safer place, making it difficult for them to finance their operations.
Sanctions also help defend democratic institutions. The international community’s support to Guatemala’s political transition in early 2024, including through sanctions, was successful in deterring individuals from undermining the democratic process in the country. Sanctions can also help nations to recover their sovereign wealth from the plundering of previous leaders. That is what we did following the popular revolts of the Arab Spring in 2011, when—at the request of the new democratic Tunisian authorities—the EU swiftly froze the assets of individuals who had illegally misappropriated Tunisian state funds.
We are not naive. We are well aware that, by themselves, sanctions are not a silver bullet, and they will not stop Putin from continuing his neoimperialistic aggression against Ukraine. Yet they have significantly weakened Russia’s war machine and made the continuation of the war more costly to the Kremlin. Sanctions impose a huge reputational cost for the countries and actors who violate them. In many places, they have demonstrated that actions against peace have consequences.
All 193 U.N. member states have the obligation to preserve the international order based on the U.N. Charter. Faced with clear breaches of international law, the EU is ready to bear its share of responsibility for a just and orderly world by imposing sanctions on those who try to undermine it.
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