Since February 2022, EU restrictive measures adopted under the Common Foreign and Security Policy have increasingly focused on targeting private wealth in response to Russia’s war against Ukraine. This paper analyses the Council’s strategies for maintaining, renewing, and expanding sanctions against Russian businesspersons (oligarchs) and their assets. It analyses the post-2022 amendments to the design and application of listing criteria, particularly the criterion (g), and the use of presumptions to secure the durability of listings decisions and the long-term imposition of asset freezes. These techniques enhance the resilience of listings to judicial review, limit opportunities for de-listing targets and unfreezing their assets, de facto immobilising private wealth within the EU. Nonetheless, they also raise broader questions about the purpose of sanctions, in particular whether asset freezes remain targeted, reversible and preventive tools to influence behaviour, or are increasingly used as instruments that aim at the long-term immobilisation of wealth.

This Article deals with selected issues of judicial protection that arise in the context of the sanctions adopted by the EU against Russia and Belarus after the 2022 invasion of Ukraine. As most cases challenging the sanctions are pending, this Article draws lessons from the previous case law on EU restrictive measures. It explores what aspects of the sanctions escape judicial review, then profiles of external (or formal) legality of the sanctions, of internal (or substantive) legality, and concludes by assessing the overall role of the Court in EU foreign affairs. The discussion shows that the case law in this area of EU administrative law converges to a great extent with other areas of EU competence, but tensions remain in how the Court may impose substantial constraints to executive discretion in the field of Common Foreign and Security Policy.

In response to Russia's aggression against Ukraine, the EU adopted a series of unprecedented ‘massive and targeted sanctions’ against the Russian economy. Whereas the EU has clarified that its restrictive measures are not directed against Russian society, it is has stated that it seeks to ‘diminish’ the Russia economy and ‘cripple’ its ability to finance the war. Such measures recall economic warfare, where the adversary's economy is targeted in order to weaken it and, if successful, would undoubtedly have an impact on Russian people. Moreover, the sanctions have had repercussions on third states and economic operators. Applying the proportionality principle, the article finds that the restrictive measures the EU has imposed on Russia in response to its aggressive war in Ukraine are disproportionate due to their impact on third parties.

Under the International Health Regulations (IHR), States must consider decision-making criteria in applying travel restrictions during a public health emergency of international concern. Interpretation on the legal parameters of such restrictions varies widely. This article considers whether and how the permissibility of travel restrictions under the IHR may have changed given recent developments, including evolving scientific evidence about their efficacy and shifting World Health Organization (WHO) advice. It is argued that such determinations must conform to the principles of necessity and proportionality as articulated by the IHR, and must also be accompanied by the correlative IHR duties of collaboration and assistance rooted substantively in global solidarity.

This contribution examines the developing contours of the essence of the fundamental right to an effective remedy and to a fair trial in the light of salient case-law of the Court of Justice of the European Union. It is divided into three main parts. The first part provides an overview of the meaning of the essence of fundamental rights in EU law and the scope of the inquiry in relation to Article 47 of the Charter of the Fundamental Rights of the European Union (“the Charter”). The second part evaluates the essence of the fundamental right to an effective remedy and to a fair trial in connection with justified limitations that may be placed on its exercise as provided for in Article 52(1) of the Charter within the framework of the EU system of fundamental rights protection, which in turn implicates the relationship with the Court’s case-law on national procedural autonomy, equivalence, and effectiveness. The third part delves into the essence of the fundamental right to an effective remedy and to a fair trial within the framework of the EU system of judicial protection, as illustrated by the Court’s case-law in several areas, including standing for individuals in direct actions before the EU courts, judicial independence, and restrictive measures in the Common Foreign and Security Policy. Through this analysis, the author argues that, while much awaits further refinement, certain recent developments in the Court’s case–law indicate that the essence of the fundamental right to an effective remedy and to a fair trial can play a meaningful role in the EU system of fundamental rights protection and the EU system of judicial protection more broadly, and thus the best may be yet to come as that case-law progresses in the future.

This article explores the legalisation of the Common Foreign and Security Policy (CFSP) of the European Union (EU) and its increasing use of sanctions. It argues that the breadth and depth of the numerous sanctions regimes in place shows that EU foreign policy is not merely an aspiration but produces law and legal processes which share similarities with those in the rest of the EU’s legal order. Further, the article examines the extent to which non-EU Member States in Europe have aligned themselves with EU sanctions. The argument is made that this is evidence not only of Europeanisation, but also crucially of a legalised foreign policy which has allowed Europe-wide, EU-led foreign policy to emerge.

In this article it is discussed how the European Union's use of treaty-making powers and other external relations competences has contributed to the establishment of human rights as customary international law and makes it more likely that democracy and modern concepts such as good governance, precaution and sustainable development, will also gain this status. A specific focus of attention is on the EU's vision of the aforementioned rights and principles as a limit to State sovereignty. It is shown that the EU promotes an interventionist approach, which allows for proportionate responses to violations of peremptory norms by or in sovereign States. Since this view is expressly subscribed by a vast number of the EU's treaty partners, the EU's vision of State sovereignty is becoming a significant element in the development of the international legal order.