🇪🇺 As announced by the European Parliament, the EU is preparing a new sanctions regime targeting migrant smugglers, traffickers and potentially other organised crime actors, adding to the 33 existing EU sanctions frameworks.
At first glance, this may seem like a logical step in the fight against organised crime. Targeted sanctions are attractive to policymakers: they are fast, flexible and politically visible.
⚖️ But their expanding use raises deeper legal questions.
Under EU law, restrictive measures are meant to be preventive, not punitive. The Court of Justice has repeatedly stressed that sanctions should address a present or future threat, rather than punish individuals for past conduct.
Yet in practice, the line is becoming blurred.
Individuals may be listed without a criminal conviction and on the basis of a much lower evidentiary threshold than criminal law normally requires. At the same time, the consequences are severe: asset freezes, financial exclusion, travel bans and lasting reputational damage.
When sanctions begin to resemble punishment, a difficult question emerges: are we moving towards a form of “trial without trial”, decided by the executive rather than by courts?