The politics behind EU sanctions

On September 11, the European Union approved the renewal of asset freezes and visa bans that the bloc has imposed since February 2022, mainly on Russians, for undermining Ukraine’s territorial integrity. But with the six-month extension, there were also two blacklistings of more than 2,300 people and companies: Nikita Mazepin, former Formula 1 driver and son of Russian oligarch Dmitri Mazepin; and Violetta Prigozhina, mother of the late Russian oligarch and mercenary leader Wagner Yevgeny Prigozhin.

Deep background: These deletions follow a pattern where a few people are removed every six months before the official transfer dates in mid-March and mid-September. This time, removal talks ended at a lower political level already in July, in what some diplomats in Brussels call the biannual “sanctions dance.”

Normally, the talks are initiated at the behest of Hungary, which has publicly criticized the bloc’s sanctions policy. Budapest typically presents a number of sanctioned individuals to other member states in political working groups that it wants delisted to give its go-ahead. (Returns require unanimity from all 27 EU member states.) They tend to be powerful oligarchs with extensive Russian business interests and ties to the Kremlin, such as Alisher Usmanov, Pyotr Aven, Viktor Rashnikov, Mikhail Fridman, Dmitri Mazepin, Grigory Berezkin and Viacheslav Moshe Kantor.

Previous rounds have shown that most other member states are militantly opposed to removing these people from the lists. They argued that it would undermine the whole idea of ​​EU sanctions if people close to President Vladimir Putin were removed and countered by suggesting that the sanctions should only be extended once a year instead of twice. Compromise has always been reached, but the result is a weakened sanctions tool. In addition, Budapest usually manages to use its veto power, extracting political favors from Brussels in other policy areas.

After this diplomatic tug-of-war, lawyers in the EU Council, one of the bloc’s main decision-making bodies, usually step in to solve the problem by proposing a list of so-called “weak cases” with less legal justification. to be sanctioned.

Since the EU claims to be an entity guided by the rule of law, its lawyers must be able to present evidence that can be found in the public domain. And as with any other EU policy, those on the sanctions list can – and do – take the EU to court. Some of those sanctioned have already won cases against Brussels and include both Prigozhina and Nikita Mazepin.

Drill down

• This is admittedly a soft blow to the Russia sanctions regime, but the EU has been here before. In March, three other names were dropped — Arkady Volozh, co-founder of Russian Internet giant Yandex; Russian businessman Sergey Mndoiants; and Jozef Hambalek, Slovak national and head of the Russian nationalist Night Wolves motorcycle club in Europe.
• In my conversations with them, EU diplomats tried to play down the latest deletions, saying it could be much worse. Prigozhina and Mazepin weren’t such big players anyway, they say, and the important thing is that highly successful oligarchs — like Mazepin’s father — are still on the blacklist.
• There is already talk of who will be removed at the next opportunity in March 2025. During the meeting of EU ambassadors in Brussels on September 11, Hungarian and Slovak diplomats pledged that for the next transfer they would aim to remove Gulbakhor Ismailova, the sister to Usmanov that was linked to various key Russian assets.
• The statement, circulated among diplomats and seen by RFE/RL, stated that “in our opinion, the grounds on which Ms. Ismailova’s inclusion was based are no longer valid. Ms. Ismailova should be removed from the sanctions list.” Based on this, Slovakia and Hungary will maintain this position in the next review.
• Will there be more? It appears that family members of oligarchs are increasingly seen by EU lawyers as “weak cases” because it is legally difficult to prove that spouses and children are directly connected to the Russian war machine.
• Two possible candidates for removal would be Galina Pumpyanskaya and Aleksandr Pumpiansky, the wife and son of Russian oligarch Dmitri Pumpiansky. An EU court overturned sanctions against Aleksandr Pumpyansky in 2023, so he is certainly seen as a “weak case”.
• Two others on the blacklist, Aven and Fridman, both won EU court cases against their sanctions. As with Pumpyansky junior, they remain on the blacklist because Brussels argued that the cases they won in EU courts concerned old listing criteria and related to an earlier period of sanctions.

Via RFE/RL

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