Respecting Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms and EU/UN Sanctions : State of Play

Executive summary The present study examines a number of issues concerning the EUs own (autonomous) sanctions (also called restrictive measures) and EU sanctions implementing UN Security Council sanctions. The interplay between the international, EU and national constitutional legal systems causes problems and creates complexity in this field but the scope for simplifying this is limited. UN and EU sanctions have very different legal bases at international law. Under EC Law, the legal basis and procedures to be followed for introducing trade/aid suspension measures is quite different from the legal basis and procedure to be followed for introducing CFSP sanctions. This distinction between the two legal bases is retained in the Lisbon treaty, although there is some increased scope for integrating these two bases. UN and EU targeted sanctions work by means of blacklisting. The procedures for blacklisting are different depending on whether the targets are governments or terrorist organisations. Identification of terrorist suspects as compared to governmental members is a much more uncertain process. [...]