While for the longest time in its history the gap between the expectations towards the European Union (EU) as a powerful player in the world economy and the EU’s capability to enact a concomitantly strong role in world politics had been a marked feature in the EU’s existence, things have changed over the past decades. Not only has the EU has increasingly assigned more attention to its role in international politics. What is more, the EU has started to complement the toolbox of its “soft power” polity with harder instruments, including restrictive and coercive measures. Being part of a comprehensive policy approach involving political dialogue and complementary efforts, sanctions have become one of the EU's tools to foster the objectives of the Common Foreign and Security Policy (CFSP),that is peace, democracy and the respect for the rule of law, human rights and international law. With its reference to both democratic sanctions (that is sanctions meant to prevent backsliding of democracy and to encourage the respect for liberal democratic governance practices) and security sanctions (that is either breaches of international law or, more general, practices that represent a risk for the EU and the international community), the EU utilizes this tool as a means to change the behavior in targeted countries. Overall, the EU sanctions policy goes consistently in line with the UN restrictive measures. However, as new emerging actor on the international arena, the EU tends to impose autonomous sanctions as well. Beyond the sanctioning instruments of the UN, the tools of the EU varies in the range of sanction types from arms embargoes, visa and travel bans, to assets freezing. Different types of EU sanctions and diverse scope are already in place – from comprehensive coercive measures for Belarus and Syria to narrowly targeted sanctions for Egypt and Tunisia. Some sanctions, for example such as arms embargoes or travel bans, are implemented directly by member states after the member states agreed thereupon in the Council.