EU Human Rights Sanctions Regime: Striving for Utopia Backed by Sovereign Power?

On 7 December 2020, the EU Foreign Affairs Council adopted an ‘EU Global Human Rights Sanctions Regime’ (EU HRSR). The objective of the EU HRSR is to give the EU to a flexible tool to address serious human rights violations and abuses worldwide. This article starts from the position that setting up an EU HRSR serves a noble objective. The EU HRSR could be desirable tool to flexibly confront those with consequences that commit serious human rights violations. Yet, it would crucially need to comply with human rights itself. This is not a small feat to accomplish. Much hinges on the listing and delisting criteria, the required evidentiary standard, and the information on which the listing decisions are based. Based on a detailed analysis of the Court of Justice’s sanctions case law, the article sets out the requirements with which the EU HRSR would have to comply. Finally, the horizontal EU HRSR is an attempt to decouple the protection of human rights from specific (political) conflicts. This decoupling directly charges the protection of human rights, which is traditionally portrayed as ‘neutral’, with sovereign politics.