Challenging European Sanctions: The Court of Justice of the European Union in Luxembourg

• Real Police

  editor Economics

Dozens of sanctioned Russians are trying to get off the European sanctions list. In Luxembourg, they challenge the sanctions imposed at the Court of the European Union, sometimes successfully. The judges of that Court now have their hands full with the cases.

Today the cases of two of them serve – Alisher Usmanov and Grigory Berezkin. Mining magnate Usmanov is one of the richest oligarchs with an estimated capital of more than 13 billion euros. According to the European sanctions list, he is one of Putin’s favorite oligarchs. He would help the Russian president financially and has taken over the business newspaper ‘Kommersant’ to convert it into a pro-Kremlink newspaper.

Usmanov himself will probably not be present in the courtroom in Luxembourg City. The same goes for Berezkin, who is listed as a prominent businessman close to Putin. Part of the sanctions is an entry ban. In their place, the French lawyer Jérôme Grand d’Esnon traveled to Kirchberg, the modern European quarter of Luxembourg City.

Why have clients gone to court? “I’m not answering any questions, absolutely none,” said Grand d’Esnon before the case began. The lawyer is well known in Luxembourg. He has often traveled to the Court to demand compensation and removal from the list for other sanctioned persons.

In total, almost eighty of these types of proceedings are now pending before the Court. “More than 10 percent of all cases here are now about sanctions because of the war in Ukraine,” said a spokesman for the court. “It’s become a really important part of the job.”

Meetings are now scheduled almost weekly. Sometimes with remarkable points of view. For example, the lawyer of oligarch Gennady Timchenko, who according to the sanctions list is known as a confidant of Putin, stated that he is not an ally of the Russian president in the war in Ukraine. “While it is true that Timchenko has known Mr. Putin for a long time, we dispute that he is a confidant.”

The first statements are also in. In most cases, the Court ruled that the sanctioned Russians are rightly on the list. But not always. The mother of Prigozhin, leader of the mercenary army Wagner, succeeded March off the sanctions list. The EU had wrongly classified her as a shareholder in her son’s companies. She hadn’t owned those shares since 2017.

The Court’s ruling will give hope to other sanctioned Russians that this is the right route to avoid sanctions against them.

It’s not the only route. There is also an option to be removed from the list by the European Council. The same Brussels authority also puts people on the list. Once every six months they go through the trio of names again and adjust if desired. “So far, the Council has not agreed on a single substantial deletion from the sanctions list,” said Jeroen Jansen, the sanctions expert assisting sanctioned Russian Arkady Volozh. “So not even in cases that would deserve deletion from the list.”

The Council does not have the political will, says Jansen. “The Council seems divided and therefore cannot take a unanimous decision, which is necessary with these types of decisions.” Jansen is hopeful that Volozj will be deleted due to a case in Luxembourg. “They apply the European legal rules, free from political considerations.”

“You can find some politics here,” says Mykolas Mazolevskis, spokesman for the Permanent Representation of Lithuania, which plays a role on behalf of that country in the formation of the sanctions list. “Especially in the case when some countries, I won’t name names, want to remove someone related to domestic problems from the list.” But according to him, no country is against scrapping per se.

Spokespersons of other Permanent Representations also say that there is a bit of politics in the talks about the sanctions list, but that legal arguments prevail. They cite the case of the Russian patriarch Kirill as an example of such a political dimension. Hungary prevented him from being listed.