Analytics
EUREN Brief 1
I
The State of EU Sanctions on Russia
In March 2019, the EU blacklisted eight
Russian officials involved in the detention of Ukrainian seamen and the seizure of their vessels in
the Kerch Strait connecting the Black Sea with the Sea of Azov last November, demanding their
release. The officials were added to a blacklist featuring those individuals responsible for the
destabilisation of Eastern Ukraine since 2014.[1]
In
turn, this blacklist is part of one of three different sanctions packages addressing distinct
aspects of the 2014 Ukraine crisis. The first sanctions package is a response to the destabilisation
of Eastern Ukraine and includes the suspension of high-level contacts and the blacklisting of
individuals and entities. Since the summer of 2014, it has also entailed restrictions on access to
the EU's capital markets for certain Russian banks and companies, an arms embargo, and limits on
access to some technologies and services for oil production and exploration. The lifting of this
sanctions regime was later linked to the full implementation of the accord that was reached in the
context of the mediation talks held in Minsk, or the Minsk Agreements, which are still
pending. A second separate sanctions regime consists of an economic embargo on Crimea, and a third
froze the assets of the officials responsible for the misappropriation of Ukrainian state funds. The
present contribution aims to contextualize this complex set of EU measures on Russian targets in the
framework of its Common Foreign and Security Policy (CFSP). It will then review the current state of
the sanctions regime and their sustainability before sketching some ideas as to how the current
impasse could be surmounted.
Introduction
May 2019
One of the most significant aspects about the
sanctions package imposed on Russian targets is that it features an economic component which is
bound to entail losses for EU industries
What is New and What is Not
While there is a long tradition of sanctions in
EU foreign policy, most sanctions measures wielded in the past have not been economic in nature. The
bulk of EU sanctions imposed during the 1990s and 2000s consisted of arms embargoes and a
prohibition on issuing visas to leadership members, top officials and their close associates in the
target countries, often accompanied by a freeze of their assets held in European banks. Belarus,
Zimbabwe and Sudan are cases in point. The EU has imposed economic measures rather exceptionally,
and when it has done so, these have come about after a target has been under sanctions for a long
time. When adopted, the economic measures have tended to remain limited in nature. A prohibition on
the export of timber and precious stones was applied to Myanmar in 2007, sixteen years after the
onset of the regime. Needless to say, the effect of this ban was negligible for the European
economy.[2]
One of the most significant aspects about the sanctions package imposed on Russian targets
is that it features an economic component which is bound to entail losses for EU industries. This is
a development that EU business – with the exception of the defence industry – is unaccustomed to,
and has had to adjust to. A second and most conspicuous novelty is the imposition of sanctions on a
major global power. The only comparable instance in the EU's recent history was the arms embargo it
imposed on China following the repression of the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests. However, that
embargo does not go beyond banning the supply of military items, and it has not even been formalised
into binding legislation.
The combination of both elements in a single sanctions regime –
that of imposing measures with economic implications, and wielding them on a powerful neighbour –
would have seemed improbable just a few years ago. And the fact that the EU has been able to sustain
a rather unusual sanctions regime of for as long as five years, despite the reticence voiced by some
of its members, would have seemed even less likely to observers.
Sanctions Misunderstood?
It is often claimed that the sanctions have
failed because they have not brought about a fundamental change in Russian policy, or that Russia's
economy has shown its resilience to external economic pressure and not collapsed. These assessments
of the effects of EU sanctions suggest that their finalité has sometimes been misunderstood.
Specifically, such an analysis overlooks that Brussels never intended to bring the Russian economy
to point of collapse. Instead, sanctions were crafted to inflict only limited harm to specific areas
of the Russian economy.[3]
Sanctions were meant to increase the cost of Russia's actions to undermine Ukraine's territorial
integrity and to promote a peaceful settlement of the crisis.[4]
They were meant to create an irritant, serving as a reminder of the EU's protest over Moscow's
actions in Ukraine. But they were not designed to cause anything like large-scale damage – let alone
bring about a breakdown of the economy.
The widespread misperception of what EU sanctions
were meant to accomplish can be ascribed to two circumstances. Firstly, the very term sanctions
evokes apocalyptic images of extreme deprivation. From a semantic point of view, it is extravagant
that the same word that designates measures responsible for the humanitarian catastrophe in Iraq in
the 90s refers to measures that prevent a handful of people from taking a flight to Dublin, Rome or
Prague. However, the nature of the instrument has changed – almost all sanctions nowadays are
"targeted", meaning that they are limited measures meant to affect specific individuals, elites,
territories or sectors, rather than an entire country.[5]
A second circumstance that is causing confusion is the public's lack of familiarity with Brussel's
approach to sanctions, which differs considerably from Washington's. US measures often start out
small but are ratcheted up significantly over time. Also, they display extraterritorial effects,
meaning that Washington fines non-US persons and firms for disobeying its bans.[6]
By contrast, EU measures tend to be more modest, are tightened slower and reach lower degrees of
severity. They attempt to create discomfort rather than genuine damage and show a commitment to the
original notion of targeted sanctions.
Stagnation and Sustainability
While the EU sanctions regime on Russian targets
has proved to be resilient and stable, having survived unaltered for as many as five years, it
currently finds itself in a state of stagnation. While member states have sustained the measures
that were adopted in 2014, they are unprepared to escalate them. This reticence is observable in the
differences between EU and US responses to the most recent crises. Washington has been upgrading its
sanctions measures gradually since the spring of 2018, most recently in reaction to the poisoning of
two British citizens of Russian origin in Salisbury, interference in US domestic politics via
cyberattacks, the Azov Sea incidents and Russian military actions in Syria. Despite Washington's
habitual pressure on the EU to follow suit, Brussels has so far refrained from replicating any of
these bans. Instead, it has moved to adopt horizontal sanctions, i.e. thematic blacklists designed
to include individuals and entities responsible for breaching a specific norm. The first horizontal
list concerns the use of chemical weapons. Shortly after its adoption in 2018, it saw the
designation of the Salisbury suspects, alongside a Syrian laboratory and some scientist who had
already been listed under the EU sanctions regime on Syria.
Listing Russian targets on multinational, themed
blacklists allows Brussels to address the breaches without implying an official connection to
the Kremlin – an approach that could gain traction in other areas of EU foreign policy.