The proposed project aims at analysing EU sanctions regimes against the background of an increasing tendency of states to adopt multiple sanctions regimes ¿ including extraterritorial regimes ¿ as a reaction under international law to the commission of wrongful acts by other actors.
Today, this issue is discussed from many other standpoints as it raises political, institutional and economic issues in addition to legal problems that concern basically the legitimacy and the legal consequences of those collective and unilateral measures.
The present research mainly focuses on the specific practice of EU sanction systems and the double role of this practice that promotes both international security broadly speaking and the common values of the European Union. To this end, the European system needs to be compared with the same instruments adopted at the international level by the United Nations, as well as at domestic level by the United States, in order to answer the main questions raised by this contemporary legal issue.
The development multiple regimes of international sanctions represents a phenomenon truly relevant within the international community. It appears as an issue in constant evolution, according to political changes in several contests, and thus requires to be subject of a systematic analysis.
Due to recent political tensions and legal disputes, the research aims at giving a fresh overview of legal implication in sanctions application. With respect to the state of the art described above, the research intends in particular to provide some answers on the tools that allow international law to react to important changes in international relations in the most suitable way. As highlighted above, the contemporary praxis of states and organizations is characterized by new trends, which deserve an analysis built on new approaches.
The provisions of international, European and domestic law are not systematically studied in details by scholars, but are of outstanding importance due to two main factors concerning such measures: the related security issues, the economic value and the respect of individual rights. Efficacy, effects and consequences of these instruments need to be legally addressed in order to frame and forecast future developments in this field.
Throughout the years, international law scholars have approached the topic of international sanctions by focusing only on the works of a unique international organization, mostly the United Nations (see: L. Cavaré, Les sanctions dans le cadre de l¿ONU(1952); C. Leben, Les sanctions privatives de droits ou de qualité dans les organisations internationales spécialisées (1979); V. Gowlland¿Debbas, United Nations Sanctions and International Law (2001); F. Magnússon, Targeted Sanctions and Accountability of the United Nations Security Council (2008)) or more recently the European Union (see: A. Ciampi, L¿Union européenne et le respect des droits de l¿homme dans la mise en œuvre des sanctions devant la Cour européenne des droits de l¿homme(2006); C. Portela, European Union Sanctions and Foreign Policy: When and Why Do They Work? (2010); S. Bitter, Die Sanktion im Recht der Europäischen Union: der Begriff und seine Funktion im Europäischen Rechtsschutzsystem (2011); A. Pellet `Les sanctions de l¿Union européenne¿, in M Benlolo-Carabot U Canda¿ and ECujo (eds) Union européenne et droit international. En l¿honneur de Patrick Daillier(2012)). Some international legal scholars have given a comprehensive overview (see: N. Ronzitti, Coercive Diplomacy, Sanctions and International Law (2015)), but it is more rare to find studies adopting a comparative method. This is the reason why the present research will include a comparative examination of European and American practice, as the USA is the state that adopts the largest amount of autonomous sanctions so far, hence furnishing material for a more coherent research. The triangular overview established through this study represents the surplus value of the research.
Finally, through the lens of extraterritoriality, the present research project adds an innovative and unexplored perspective to the analysis of a well-known issue, which increase the elements for a legal assessment and a more comprehensive evaluation of compliance with international provisions.