Why have European states increasingly imposed economic sanctions for foreign policy goals through the European Union? Why did they refrain from imposing sanctions through the European Community (EC) during the Cold War? Economic sanctions have become an important foreign policy tool for states. Since the end of the Cold War, they have been used for a host of foreign policy goals ranging from discouraging the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction to improving human rights conditions. One study notes that there were fifty cases of economic sanctions in the 1990s – a jump of 36 percent over the 1980s, 22 percent over the 1970s, and 58 percent over the 1960s. Furthermore, great powers such as the United States, Russia, and Japan have been particularly prone to using them.

In Europe, the major powers – Britain, France, and Germany – have increasingly imposed economic sanctions through the European Union, rather than unilaterally or multilaterally through other forums. This chapter examines all economic sanctions cases between 1950 and 2006 in which a European state was a primary sender. It finds that between 1950 and 1990 European states sanctioned through the EC in two out of seventeen cases (12 percent). Since 1991, however, they have imposed economic sanctions through the European Union in twenty-one of twenty-seven cases (78 percent), an increase in both the percentage and the aggregate number of cases.