It is understood that Russian owned oil and gas company, Rosneft, has re-challenged the EU’s decision to impose sanctions on Russia in July 2014, challenging the sanctions in both the European General Court and the UK High Court of Justice. This follows a preliminary ruling from the European Court of Justice in March 2017 that the measures had been both valid and that had sufficient reasons had been provided. Rosneft has argued that the March…
The Department for International Trade (“DIT”) yesterday published Notice to exporters 2017/25 (the “Notice”) in light of the new restrictive measures, including an arms embargo and internal repression related controls, imposed by the EU effective from 14 November 2017 (the “Measures”). Please see here for our previous blog post regarding introduction of the Measures. The Notice provides useful guidance to UK exporters on interpretation issues, as well as further detail on the restrictions from a…
Following on from a meeting of the EU Foreign Affairs Council (“FAC”) yesterday, at which the FAC unanimously agreed to impose restrictive measures on Venezuela, the EU has today published Council Decision 2017/2074 and Council Regulation (EU) 2017/2063 (together, the “Legislation”). The Legislation prescribes targeted sanctions against Venezuela, including an arms embargo, with immediate effect. The Legislation has been formulated in response to the continuing crisis in Venezuela and the perceived deterioration of democracy, the…
EU ambassadors have agreed to impose an arms embargo on Venezuela, in addition to a ban on equipment used for internal repression. The decision follows an August 2017 UN report (available here) that concluded that “extensive human rights violations and abuses” had taken place in the context of country-wide anti-Government demonstrations. EU Foreign Ministers will vote on the proposed embargo next week.