EU 'Divided' Over New Anti-Corruption Sanctions Regime, Parliament Hears

EU member states are split over whether to introduce a new anti-corruption sanctions regime, the EU Parliament’s Subcommittee on Human Rights heard this week. Advocates during the hearing urged the bloc to establish the regime, saying it would further align EU trade controls with the U.S. and help the EU more quickly and easily sanction Russian oligarchs.

Parliament member Jordi Sole of Spain said member states “are still divided on whether to move forward” with the new sanctions framework. “I will hope this division can be overcome in the coming weeks and months,” he said during the April 24 hearing, “because in the end, it will be up to the member states to support a possible initiative coming from the Commission.”

The hearing was held about seven months after European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said the EU plans to introduce an anti-corruption sanctions regime under its existing human rights sanctions process (see 2209140030). Sole said he would rather the bloc create a “stand-alone” framework, which could help the EU more quickly impose designations. He also said it would lead to “better coordination with our like-minded partners” and a more effective “impact of the sanctions.”

A commission official during the hearing also said there’s “no full alignment” yet across member states on the potential regime, but noted that it took the EU “about a year” to propose and adopt its human rights sanctions authority. “I think the rhythm with which we adopt sanctions has radically changed,” the official said. “I believe that if and when a proposal is put on the table, this would probably go much smoother.”

Tinatin Tsertsvadze, senior policy analyst at the Open Society Foundation, urged member states to adopt a stand-alone regime, saying it will “enable the EU to work much closer and align its foreign policy objectives with it's like-minded partners,” naming the U.S., the U.K., Canada and Australia. “We cannot underestimate the importance of the multilateral use of sanctions.”

Tsertsvadze pointed to the October sanctions the U.S. imposed against Russian oligarchs for corruption in Moldova (see 2210260067), noting that the EU wasn’t able to quickly adopt similar measures. “In the absence of an … anti-corruption framework or what the U.S. and U.K. have used, a Global Magnitsky framework, the EU was unable to follow this quickly to give a very necessary symbolic and political support” to Moldova.

She also said an anti-corruption sanctions framework would allow the EU to more easily designate Russian officials who don’t have a clear path to being sanctioned under existing European laws. “Enacting measures can be very tricky if there is a difficulty to find evidence to support their designations,” Tsertsvadze said, but “if there is a strong legal framework on anti-corruption,” the bloc can use that regime to sanction oligarchs for “corruption in their domestic jurisdictions.”

There are also “very important legal safeguards” for the EU to consider before adopting an anti-corruption sanctions regime, she said, adding that the bloc should “adopt a very solid evidentiary threshold.” Tsertsvadze said the EU’s current definition for standards of proof can sometimes “make it difficult for the council to defend and to protect its own cases.” She also said the EU should clearly define the types of corruption that would be subject to sanctions, the scope of those sanctions and any procedures for sanctioned people to seek de-listings.