The European Union trade sanctions against Russia: Contemporary practice

Abstract

Targeted financial sanctions have been playing a major role in the toolbox of European Union (EU) policy of sanctions since early 2000s. They have been targeting particular natural persons and entities, rather than states in general. Things have been changing dramatically since the outbreak of Russian military operation against Ukraine in February 2022. EU has already implemented massive bans on exports and imports of wide range of goods and services to and from Russia. Meanwhile, academic literature on sanctions still has a major gap in understanding of trade sanctions. The goal of the article is to fill this gap, taking into account contemporary trends of the EU trade sanctions against Russia. The major point implies that the EU policy of trade sanctions vis a vis Russia suffers from the imbalance between the quantity of sanctions and the quality of ways and means to enforce them. Unlike the United States, which enjoys well-developed instruments and practice of the use of secondary sanctions and enforcement, the EU has to implement sanctions and to develop enforcement in a simultaneous way. Brussels has already introduced mechanisms of de-facto secondary sanctions and is promoting the unification of enforcement legislation among the member-states. Current enforcement activity of member-states on the basis of domestic legislation compensates such an imbalance. The study of these trends purports the analysis of the EU normative documents as well as the ones, which reflect political and legal practice of their implementation.