The Use of Sanctions to Achieve EU Strategic Autonomy: Restrictive Measures, the Blocking Statute and the Anti-Coercion Instrument

Sanctions are increasingly used by the European Union to pursue foreign and security policy objectives. Nowadays, these objectives include the protection of the Union’s strategic autonomy too. As our empirical analysis suggests, restrictive measures – the official EU notion for sanctions – define strategic autonomy as much as they are defined by it. We understand the notion of ‘sanctions’ widely, not only encompassing measures adopted within the framework of the Common Foreign and Security Policy (CFSP), but also other EU acts closely connected to sanctions – including the Blocking Statute and the Anti-Coercion Instrument (ACI) – that also aim to strengthen the Union’s strategic autonomy. The picture sanctions paint is one of strategic autonomy as a principle not only of processes, but also of substance. In terms of processes, it is an objective that allows for selective uses of partnership; and in terms of substance, it is also in the name of this principle that EU institutions have proceeded to a balancing between rights, interests, and values.