The increasingly frequent imposition of sanctions by the EU over the past decade has notbeen accompanied by a thorough pre-assessment and contingency planning stage, which hasled to the formulation of suboptimal sanctions regimes. This paper argues for establishing apre-assessment and contingency planning of sanctions, departing from the 'ad hoc-ism' ofcurrent decision-making on sanctions. To this end, it proposes the development of a'checklist' composed of key questions that need to be tackled to optimise the design ofsanctions. These questions include the identification of resources linked to the objectionablepolicies; the leverage of the EU; the costs to the EU; the legality of the measures; theirunintended effects; the expected contribution towards EU goals; their coherence with overallEU external relations; and the communication of these policies.
The dataset is composed of the entire universe of sanctions regimes imposed by the UN, US and EU in the period from 1990 to 2010, including those sanctions regimes that were in place by 1990, targeting a country, its leadership and entities associated with it. Episodes which are still on-going are also recorded. Included are all sanctioned countries which have been coded – at least – at the start of sanction episodes as "autocratic regimes" by the Hadenius/Teorell/Wahman dataset on authoritarian regimes (2012).
This note offers reflections on qualified market access (QMA) the practice of linking trade agreements to values such as human rights, labour standards, or environmental protection. This idea has been suggested by political theorists as a way of fulfilling our duties to the global poor and of making the global economic system more just, and it has influenced a number of concrete policies, such as European Union (EU) trade policies. Yet, in order to assess its merits tout court, different perspectives and disciplines need to be brought together, such as international law, economics, political science, and philosophy. It is also worth reflecting on existing practices, such as those of the EU. This note summarises some insights about QMA by drawing such research together and considers the areas in which further research is needed, whilst reflecting also on the merits of interdisciplinary exchanges on such topics.
The Foreign Ministers of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) held their annual summit from 17 to 18 November 2012 in Phnom Penh, Cambodia. European Union (EU) decision-makers have paid relatively little attention to the ASEAN region despite entering into a series of important agreements with ASEAN as a whole and with individual ASEAN member states: In July 2012 the EU entered into the Treaty of Amity and Cooperation in Southeast Asia (TAC), an important regulatory framework for the region. In October 2012, it finished negotiating a partnership and cooperation agreement (PCA) with Vietnam, and in December of the same year, it signed a free trade agreement (FTA) with Singapore. But despite these milestones, the EU generally has played a minor role in the region. To participate in Southeast Asia's economic dynamism, the EU must make clear its importance to the region – above and beyond trade. The ASEAN Charter of 2007 brought ASEAN's institutional structures more in line with the EU. One important reform included making human rights protection one of ASEAN's goals. Myanmar's political opening also provides the EU with new room to promote farreaching regional initiatives that could beef up ASEAN–EU relations. The EU's role as a security actor in Southeast Asia remains marginal, as shown by ASEAN's rejection of its bid to join the East Asia Summit (EAS). Whether the EU's accession efforts will one day succeed depends on how regional actors rate its contribution to major security issues.
Vom 17. bis 18. November 2012 trafen sich die Außenminister der ASEAN (Association of South East Asian Nations) in Phnom Penh, Kambodscha, zu ihrem jährlichen Gipfel. Die EU-Entscheidungsträger haben der ASEAN-Region bislang relativ wenig Aufmerksamkeit gewidmet, auch wenn 2012 eine Reihe wichtiger Abkommen mit der ASEAN oder einzelnen ASEAN-Staaten abgeschlossen wurde. So ist die EU im Juli 2012 dem Vertrag über Freundschaft und Zusammenarbeit (TAC) beigetreten – einem wichtigen Vertragswerk in der Region. Mit Vietnam wurden die Verhandlungen über ein Partnerschafts- und Kooperationsabkommen abgeschlossen. Trotz dieser Wegmarken bleibt die Rolle der EU für das Geschehen in der Region bisher marginal. Die EU sollte bestrebt sein, gegenüber Südostasien über ihre Bedeutung im Bereich des Handels hinaus ihre eigene wichtige Rolle zu erklären, um selbst vom dynamischen Aufschwung in Asien zu profitieren. Die ASEAN-Charta von 2007 näherte die institutionellen Strukturen der ASEAN in einem ungekannten Ausmaß an die der EU an. Als wichtige Neuerung hat ASEAN den Schutz der Menschenrechte als eines ihrer Ziele aufgenommen. Auch durch die politische Öffnung Myanmars ergeben sich für die EU neue Handlungsspielräume für weiterreichende regionale Initiativen, um die ASEAN-EU-Beziehungen zu vertiefen. Die Rolle der EU als Sicherheitsakteur in der Region bleibt weiterhin marginal. Sinnbildlich hierfür ist, dass ASEAN die Ambitionen der EU ablehnt, dem Ostasien Gipfel (EAS) beizutreten. Ob die Beitrittsbemühungen der EU von Erfolg gekrönt sein werden, hängt letzten Endes davon ab, wie die regionalen Akteure ihren Beitrag zu wichtigen Sicherheitsfragen bewerten.
On 23 April 2012, the European Union (EU) suspended its sanctions against Burma/ Myanmar in response to a series of domestic political reforms that have been enacted since Thein Sein became the new president in March 2011. Since March 2011, Burma/ Myanmar has witnessed a liberalization of the press, the release of political prisoners and the initiation of a political dialogue between the regime on the one hand and the opposition and ethnic groups on the other. The reforms culminated in by-elections on 1 April 2012, which in turn resulted in a landslide victory for Aung San Suu Kyi's National League for Democracy (NLD). Overall, political reforms in Burma/ Myanmar are being initiated from "above." They are elite-driven and stem from the president and progressive members of the military-dominated party, the Union Solidarity and Development Party (USDP). Political reforms in Myanmar are a regime reaction to both internal and external factors. Internally, the military felt secure enough to embark on the slow liberalization of the political system. Externally, the growing economic presence of China seems to have worried the generals. Progress is, however, slow, uneven and very fragile. Hard-liners within the regime still threaten the reform process. Moreover, the influence of the military within the political system and the economy is still pervasive. The EU has responded to the reforms by suspending almost all existing sanctions, with the exception of the arms embargo and the withdrawal of trade preferences, while starting to employ "carrots" such as development aid. By EU standards, agreement on the suspension of the virtual entirety of sanctions has been reached remarkably swiftly. The exclusion of the arms embargo from the suspension reflects the EU's policies on armaments supply. The resumption of trade preferences will require a separate, lengthier legal process.
"Sanctions have been imposed on number of rogue regimes including Iran, Cuba, Myanmar, and North Korea by the U.S., European Union, or the United Nations. The situations have varied in their strength and objective. This paper discusses the effectiveness of sanction efforts." (adapted from the source document)
When a country is sanctioned for violating international rules today, it is usually targeted by several different entities. The degree to which sanctions by different senders overlap remains a largely unexplored phenomenon. In this paper, we examine the extent of sanctions cooperation, i.e. joint action among major sanctions senders (the US, the EU, and regional organizations) against identical targets. We then map regional patterns and evaluate one potential explanation for them. Our analysis leads to three major findings. First, sanctions overlap is predominant and has consistently increased over the last three decades. Twothirds of sanctions involve more than a single sender. Targets today are usually subject to punishment by at least three different sanctions senders (up from one in 1980) and sometimes up to six different senders. Second, world regions vary widely in the extent of sanctions cooperation, the profile of sanctions senders, and their interactions. Third, to explain variation in sanctions cooperation, we find that hegemonic stability theory does not provide much leverage. We conclude by outlining avenues for future research on sanctions cooperation relating to sanctions onset and effectiveness.
This Chaillot Paper is the outcome of a Task Force on African Futures, launched in November 2019 by the EUISS in partnership with leading African and European research institutions. The Task Force identified the implementation of the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) as a key factor driving economic, technological and societal transformations in Africa in the next decade. Based on the premise that continental integration is critical for Africa's economic recovery and future resilience, the publication portrays what an integrated and prosperous African continent could look like in 2030, thanks to the full implementation of the AfCFTA. It describes the pathways, milestones and initiatives that can lead to such a desirable scenario in ten selected, cross-cutting areas, showing how coordinated policy action in these sectors is essential to achieve trade integration. In contrast, it also warns about what could happen if negative sectoral trends are not addressed, highlighting the perils and costs of inaction. Finally, it argues that integration under the AfCFTA can be a primary conduit for the strengthening of African multilateralism, and an antidote to proxy conflicts and depredation.
