Why does the EU sanction corrupt politicians?

The European Commission (KE) had proposed about a year ago that the European Union (BE) should impose sanctions on people and entities convicted of serious corruption. But very little has been done in this regard.

When this proposal was announced in May 2023, expectations were high that the EU would have something like the so-called “Magnitsky”, which are already implemented in Canada, Great Britain and the United States.

Such measures enable countries to target corrupt businessmen and compromised officials.

European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, who had come up with this idea during a speech in the fall of 2022, has not spoken much about the matter in recent months.

However, the main reason why this proposal has stalled, as is usually the case when it comes to the bloc's sanctions, is because of its member states and because of the need to find consensus.

When the EU adopted the new sanctions regime in 2020 against human rights abuse worldwide, corruption was removed as sanctioning violations.

Hungary had said it would not support the proposal, if references for corruption were included, while other member states -- namely Luxembourg and those of southern Europe -- expressed their reluctance as well.

The issue has dragged through various working groups of lower diplomatic levels since the European Commission ʹ the EU executive group submitted the bill nearly a year ago to the European Union Council, which defines the bloc's priorities and political direction.

Sweden, which chaired the Council when the European Commission announced its proposal, had only a few weeks remaining in its chairmanship and decided not to address the issue at all. Spain, which was not very pleased with the proposal, also decided not to put it into the agenda at all during its chairmanship in the second half of the year.

Belgium, which is now leading the presidency of the Council, will probably act the same. Belgian officials have hinted that it is unlikely that this issue will be brought forward when there is no consensus among member states.

As the EU is preparing for elections in the European Parliament, this proposal will be forgotten even more.

There are many legitimate concerns about making corruption sanctionable violations. Some European politicians are concerned that restrictive internal measures would be used to punish political opponents.

Then there are concerns about how far Brussels could go when it comes to intervention in issues seen primarily as domestices in third countries.

Some diplomats who have spoken of Radio Free Europe stress that the sanctions the EU imposes do not have to deal with what could be described as “economic crimes”, but rather with the “clasical violation” of the task.

For example, the continued support of a country's territorial integrity minim has caused asset freezes and visa regimes, mainly against Russian citizens in recent years, following the invasion of Ukraine by Moscow in 2022. Other cases include killings, torture and mistreatment, which are involved in the EU sanctions regime for human rights violations worldwide.

There is another obstacle: the need to find sufficient and reliable evidence to impose sanctions. Brussels can target people and companies only through public access information, and, of course, corruption is extremely dark work.

The EU has not had enough luck with perhaps the regime of major sanctions related to corruption so far: 2014's decision to impose punitive measures against former Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych, and against his 17 closest associates, for “the adoption of state funds from Ukraine”.

Ten years later, only three people were left on the blacklist, as others managed to get rid of the list through the European Court of Justice ( GED. Brussels officials have already accepted the same as the GjED judges that most of the evidence they had at the time was unconvincing and that sanctions against them were imposed hastily.

EU talks with GED were highlighted even more recently, when some Russian citizens, who were sanctioned because of the war in Ukraine, managed to win over it at the Luxembourg-based court.

Here are diplomats who have sanctions against corruption with one of their most powerful arguments. As legal decisions have proved, it is sometimes difficult to prove links to the Russian war. If corruption were sanctioned along with other violations, there would probably have been more evidence and greater opportunity to keep individuals on the sanctioned list.

Those for anti-corruption sanctions say it would help establish a working group on this issue within the Council of the European Union, where ministers from member states meet to discuss, change and adopt laws.

The European Commission's Current Proposal, Seen by Radio Free EuropeWell, it's pretty limited to the field, which might actually help.

According to the proposal, there will be three categories: active bribery, meaning “Promise, offering or offering an illegal opportunity to a public official, directly or indirectly, for the official or official himself, or for one person or other entity”; passive bribery, which implies acceptance by a public official of such an offer; and embezzlement and abuse of property by an official.