For a brief overview of the key points of the adopted text and its significance for the citizen, please see the corresponding summary note.

Background and state of play

Sergey Magnitsky was a Russian tax expert and whistleblower who claimed to have uncovered massive fraud involving corrupt officials. In 2009 he died in prison after being severely beaten by guards and denied access to medical treatment. In 2012, the US adopted the Magnitsky Act, with sanctions targeting those responsible for Magnitsky's death and other gross human rights abuses in Russia. This was followed in 2016 by the Global Magnitsky Act, which envisages sanctions for serious human rights violations and corruption from all over the world. Similar laws modeled on the Global Magnitsky Act were adopted by several other countries, including Canada, the UK and the Baltic states, and finally in December 2020, by the EU itself.

Long before the new measures, the EU already had human rights sanctions, but these were geographically limited in scope to individual countries. However, the EU is increasingly shifting to a thematic approach; since 2016, it has added chemical weapons and cyberattacks sanctions covering the entire world. The advantage of this approach is that new persons and entities can be flexibly added to EU sanctions lists without requiring a separate legal framework for each country.

In December 2018, the Netherlands proposed EU-level thematic human rights sanctions. The idea initially met with resistance from some Member States, and it was not until after one year of behind-the-scenes discussions that High Representative Josep Borrell announced that the EU was ready to start work on the requisite measures. On 7 December 2020, EU foreign ministers adopted the legislative framework for the new sanctions, comprising a Council Regulation and Decision.

Content of the new sanctions

The new sanctions envisage asset freezes and travel bans for persons and organisations responsible for serious human rights violations: genocide; crimes against humanity; torture and other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment; slavery; extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions and killings; enforced disappearance of persons; and arbitrary arrests or detentions.

Furthermore, sanctions can also be applied in the event of other violations if they are widespread, systematic or otherwise of serious concern, in view of principles such as respect for human rights, democracy and the rule of law which underpin the EU’s Common Foreign and Security Policy. Such violations include, but are not limited to, human trafficking; sexual and gender-based violence; violations of freedom of peaceful assembly, association, opinion and expression, religion and belief.

Unlike the equivalent US legislation, EU sanctions do not mention corruption as a criterion for sanctions, nor are they named after Magnitsky.

Council decisions on sanctions are always adopted by unanimity, which sometimes makes it difficult to reach agreement. European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen and MEPs are among the many who have called for qualified-majority voting on sanctions. Instead of the current opaque intergovernmental process for selecting persons and organisations to be included on sanctions lists, it has also been proposed to involve human rights experts and NGOs. However, the new sanctions follow the standard EU procedure, with unanimous decisions by the Council based on proposals by Member States or the High Representative

Position of the European Parliament

In its resolution of March 2019 on a European human rights violations sanctions regime, the European Parliament backed the new sanctions regime, and urged the Council to reach agreement on it by the end of the parliamentary term in May 2019. The Parliament is in favour of the Council adopting sanctions by qualified majority rather than unanimity. Given the symbolic importance of Magnitsky's case, the Parliament feels that the regime should be named after him. In its September 2020 resolution on the poisoning of Alexei Navalny, the Parliament again called on the Council to approve and implement Magnitsky-style sanctions in the near future.  In February 2024,  following the death of Alexei Navalny in suspicious circumstances in a Russian penal colony, Josep Borrell, the EU High Representative for Foreign and Security Affairs proposed to rename the EU global human rights sanctions regime after him.

References:

• European Parliament, Resolution of 14 March 2019 on a European human rights violations sanctions regime, 2019/2580(RSP)

• European Parliament, Resolution of 17 September 2020 on the situation in Russia: the poisoning of Alexei Navalny, 2020/2777(RSP)

• European Commission, State of the Union 2020, Speech, 16 September 2020

• European Commission, Sanctions and Human Rights: towards a European framework to address human rights violations and abuses worldwide, Press Release, 19 October 2020

• European External Action Service, The long and complex road towards an EU Global Human Rights Sanctions Regime, 31 October 2020
• Council, Summary of Decision (CFSP) 2020/1999 and Regulation 2020/1998 concerning restrictive measures against serious human rights violations and abuses, Eurlex, December 2020
• Estonian Presidency of the Council of the EU, EU Sanctions Map

Further reading:

• European Parliament, EPRS, An EU human rights sanctions regime?, At a Glance, April 2019

• EU ministers break ground on European ‘Magnitsky Act’, Euractiv, December 2019

• EU to prepare Magnitsky-style human rights sanctions regime, Politico, December 2019

• European Parliament, EPRS, Alexei Navalny: Anti-corruption campaigner, opposition leader and Kremlin victim, At a Glance, February 2024

Author: Martin Russell, Members' Research Service, legislative-train@europarl.europa.eu