The European Parliament has long championed protection of human rights worldwide. To guarantee basic rights for everyone, it is important that those who violate human rights are punished. The EU adopted its own global human rights sanctions regime (EU GHRSR) in 2020, under which it can freeze assets and ban travel for people and organisations who seriously violate or abuse human rights, irrespective of where the infringement occurs. The EU applied its first human rights sanctions in March 2021 and by April 2024 had imposed restrictive measures on 108 individuals and 28 entities.
Even though Parliament has no formal role in the procedure for adopting new sanction regimes, it makes sure the human rights sanctions regime stays on the EU’s agenda. Parliament worked across three parliamentary terms between 2010 and 2020, using hearings, parliamentary questions, motions and own-initiative resolutions to call for EU-wide measures. After a 2018 position paper from the Dutch government led to discussion among EU Member States, Parliament stepped up its action, devoting a plenary debate to EU human rights sanctions in 2019, and adopting a resolution setting out recommendations. It adopted a further resolution in 2020, calling for the work to be finalised.
In May 2023, the High Representative, supported by the Commission, proposed to establish an EU foreign and security policy sanctions regime to target serious acts of corruption worldwide. The Commission and some Member States also support Parliament’s demand for Council decisions on sanctions to be adopted under qualified majority voting.
With attention now turning to the impact and effectiveness of the EU’s human rights sanctions, Parliament is pushing for a greater institutional role for itself, including parliamentary oversight of the EU GHRSR and an enhanced role in proposing cases for investigation. In 2023, a Parliament study recommended ways to expand its involvement in monitoring and scrutinising implementation and enforcement of EU sanctions, for example through a dedicated parliamentary working group, development of an in-house monitoring capability, and more structured dialogue with other EU institutions on specific sanctions measures.
By pushing for external action and setting the EU’s agenda, Parliament ensures the issue of a human rights sanctions regime remains an EU priority. Parliament’s powers fall broadly into six, often overlapping, domains: law-making, the budget, scrutiny of the executive, external relations, and, to a lesser extent, constitutional affairs and agenda-setting. This graphic shows more examples of areas where Parliament used one or more of its different powers to influence legislation:
For a fuller picture of the European Parliament’s activity over the past five years, take a look at our publication Examples of Parliament’s impact: 2019 to 2024: Illustrating the powers of the European Parliament, from which this case is drawn.