Four years ago, on December 7, 2020, the European Union (EU) adopted its Global Human Rights Sanction Regime (EUGHRSR), which has been applauded as a milestone in the field of human rights promotion and protection. December 10, the UN’s global Human Rights Day, is a suitable occasion to put both the EUGHRSR and its performance to date to scrutiny.
The EUGHRSR is part of the broader set of so-called Magnitsky legislation enacted by Western states to counter human rights abuses abroad. The US implemented its Magnitsky Rule of Law Accountability Act in 2012, in commemoration of Sergei Magnitsky, who revealed corruption cases linked to the Russian government and died in Russian custody in 2009. The US model was translated to equivalent legislation, most notably in Estonia in 2016, Lithuania and Canada in 2017, Latvia in 2018, the UK and the EU in 2020, and Australia in 2021. The EU has abstained from using the “Magnitsky” label to avoid that the regime is only associated with the Russian case.
Although the US’s Magnitsky framework initially targeted human rights violations in Russia, it has since been broadened in scope. These innovations mark a recent chapter in the broader trend towards more targeted (or “smart”) and horizontal sanctions. In contrast to conventional, geographically anchored sanction regimes that target specific countries or regions, horizontal sanctions are thematic and refer to areas such as cybersecurity, chemical weapons, terrorism, or human rights.
An evaluation of how the EUGHRSR has fared since its inception is justified because it was prolonged by the Council for three more years on December 4, 2023. Meanwhile, a long line of research argues that sanctions often harm the human rights situation in the target country and increase political repression. Despite sanctioning states’ noble aspirations improving respect for human rights – for instance, by depriving the target of the means to oppress citizens – sanctions may backfire and worsen the human rights situation. This may occur if sanctioned leaders are no longer able to appease their supporters, if sanctions trigger domestic dissent and instability, or if government capacity limited by sanctions leads to poorly monitored and thus increasingly abusive security agencies. Consequently, the utility of the tool of sanctions can be compromised. Nevertheless, some positive effects can be found for specific types of human rights, at the stage of sanction threat, and depending on the kind of sanction being imposed.
The Added Value
The EU has imposed targeted sanctions on individuals for roughly two decades, including travel bans, asset freezes and prohibitions to make funds available. In this regard, the EUGHRSR is no novelty. The EUGHRSR takes seriously the standard critique of sanctions, which is that sanctions harm the targeted countries’ populations, while the political elite are left mostly untouched. Its main innovative potential, however, lies in the fact that it allows for the imposition of sanctions against individuals irrespective of the existence of a geographical sanctions regime. Until the implementation of the EUGHRSR, the sanctioning of human rights violations had to be executed via the channel of country-specific sanction regimes. Because the EUGHRSR is a thematic regime of sanctions, its scope is both global and transnational, and thus does not hinge upon the specific location or the country of origin of the targeted actors. Its design reflects shifts in security challenges, which not only emerge from governments, but also from non-state actors. The EUGHRSR targets not only the natural or legal persons and entities directly responsible for human rights transgressions, but also those who indirectly provide support to or are associated with them. As the EUGHRSR can not only be used to sanction individual persons but also corporations, it closes loopholes that could otherwise allow corporate actors to escape punishment. Compared to other sanctions regime types, the instrument is said to be more flexible and may facilitate approval and consensus in the Council by dividing broader sanctions efforts up into smaller and more manageable units. For the human rights sector at large, whose laws are only binding for states, and which generally suffers from weak enforcement options, the EUGHRSR represents a useful tool.
Taking Stock
Taking stock of four years of EUGHRSR usage, one can argue that its application has been rather selective. Following the latest numbers from the Council Decision 2024/3004 of December 2, 2024, the list of designated individuals includes 115 natural persons, as well as 33 legal persons, organizations and entities. While these efforts are appreciable, it goes without saying that many other perpetrated human rights violations hitherto remain untargeted. Almost half of the cases treated under this instrument target Russian nationals and entities, with considerably fewer cases covering other “usual suspects” such as Myanmar, the DPRK, Libya, Syria, and others. The number of designations has differed considerably across the years, with 23 designations in 2021, zero in 2022 and 65 in 2023. So far, 2024 has roughly seen the same number of designations as 2023. The measures are reviewed on a yearly basis and have been recently prolonged until December 8, 2025. To the author’s best knowledge, only two persons have ever been delisted, one without a reason provided by the Council and one died. Meanwhile, the EU currently lists 4965 individuals and entities across all sanction regimes, which illustrates the EUGHRSR’s overall relatively small share.
The regime’s application shows fluctuations with respect to the proportions of different kinds of human rights violations: While the punishment of arbitrary detentions and killings has approximately halved in 2023 compared to 2021, violations of rape and against the freedom of expression have been tackled more in 2023 vs. 2021. This may be, inter alia, due to the fact that the parallel existence of both country-specific sanction regimes and thematic sanction regimes allows for overlaps of listings, i.e., targets may be listed in either or both. Still, most EU sanctions regimes remain geographically targeted.
Challenges
Although the EUGHRSR has been applauded by many, a bolder and more consistent use was and remains hampered by at least five distinct challenges. First, critics contest the instrument of human rights sanctions in general. The Magnitsky legislations, which represent Western action against other states, have been criticized by developing countries and powers such as China and Russia, who consider unilateral sanctions a violation of national sovereignty, and thus consider the sanctions as illegitimate or illegal.
Second, the instrument has caused concerns regarding its compliance with human rights obligations. Some argue that human rights sanctions in general, and the EUGHRSR in particular, impinge on the rights of the targeted individuals, including their right to defense and judicial protection against unfounded listings. As the designation criteria and listing decisions are made behind closed doors, such sanctions are difficult to legally challenge. Given that the EUGHRSR also applies to people who are associated with human rights violators, those enacting the sanctions risk targeting innocent persons.
Third, the kind of sanctions that the EUGHRSR may impose come with limited enforceability and fewer capacities by which the Commission can monitor their implementation. Although the implementation of financial, economic and asset freeze sanctions is typically monitored by the Commission, such enforcement capacities are not existent in the case of visa bans, which are implemented by EU member states. Therefore, the Commission cannot prevent violations by member states, making the tool less potent.
Fourth, every listing hinges upon the requirement of unanimity by EU governments as represented in the Council. Historically, unanimity has been proven to be a hurdle to sanction imposition, which results in some cases being left unsanctioned, such as Ethiopia around the Tigray conflict. This may be the case when at least one of the EU member states makes use of its de facto veto right, like France in the context of the Ivory Coast at the turn of the century. The EUGHRSR thus replicates known patterns from other sanctions regimes under the EU’s Common Foreign and Security Policy framework, in that they are more rarely imposed against strategic allies, e.g. Angola. After all, they are foreign policy instruments and will be tailored to the foreign policy preferences of the involved governments. Although the Council decisions and implementing regulations mention the reasons for why a person or entity has been listed, the evidentiary requirements for listing and delisting decisions are opaque and cannot be subjected to judicial review. Similarly, the objectives of such regimes tend to be vague and guidance on delisting is scarce. In comparison to the EUGHRSR, their country-specific counterparts tend to have clearer indicators for their lifting.
Fifth, in comparison to the Magnitsky sanctions regimes implemented by other Western states, the EUGHRSR crucially does not cover grand corruption. This has been criticized because corruption is said to be a foundation for subsequent gross human rights violations. Autocratic regimes which are usually targeted by sanctions are more likely to have kleptocratic and patrimonial systems serving the networks in power. Omitting corruption as an issue area may reduce the EUGHRSR’s effectiveness and represent a comparative disadvantage compared to the other Magnitsky sanction regimes.
Conclusion
In the current age of horizontal sanctions, a regime dedicated to punishing human rights violations globally has been overdue. Beyond its de facto reach and coverage in practice, the regime carries an important symbolism and has substantial signaling power. Nevertheless, the analysis has shown that an exhaustive application of the EUGHRSR is hampered by some notable challenges. Consequently, the instrument is not operating at full potential. The outlined arguments may point to an implicit primacy given to geographical regimes by decision-makers, be it because they allow for more comprehensive measures, because they have better oversight mechanisms, or because country-specific regimes have clearer designation criteria. Although the EUGHRSR is a suitable instrument to catch human rights abusers who have previously fallen through the cracks, this may mean that it may serve as a residual measure, rather than as an independent, robust tool in the EU’s foreign policy arsenal.
For the future, designing the country-specific and human rights regimes as mutually exclusive may contribute to streamline the EUGHRSR’s added value. Besides, the introduction of clear and transparent guidelines regarding the designation criteria may contribute to prevent allegations of double standards, arbitrary decisions, and the abuse of the regime by states as a vehicle to forward their interests. While the instrument lacks strategic direction in general, the EU could benefit from the EUGHRSR as an opportunity to truly make the case for human rights protection and promotion and thereby do justice to its proclaimed value-based approach to foreign policy.
To increase the regime’s leverage, global coverage and effectiveness as an instrument of human rights protection and promotion at global scale, it will in the long run likely be necessary to converge and harmonize the engaged states’ designations for the sake of sanction alignment and coordination across different sanction senders. So far, different countries’ designation lists show a limited degree of overlap. For instance, the EU’s use of the human rights sanctions regime so far has been considerably more selective than the US’ Magnitsky sanctions. According to Human Rights First, there is missed potential regarding the multilateralization of Magnitsky sanctions. The more states adopt Magnitsky-type legislation, the more the pressure may rise for like-minded states to do the same. The participation of new allies would not only help protect human rights globally, but would also contribute to its broader recognition as an instrument and innovation in both the fields of sanctions and the defense of human rights.
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