Abstract

This article deals with economic sanctions enacted in order to create pressure on a government or on definite persons. When the economic sanctions have been enacted by the Security Council of the United Nations (“UN Sanctions”), the Member States are legally obliged to implement these sanctions. However, as of 2008, the Court of Justice of the European Union and, as of 2012, the European Court of Human Rights have judged that in spite of their binding nature, the UN Sanctions do not allow Member States (or the European Union) to breach fundamental rights (procedural rights and, for example, the right to property, which requires respecting the principles of proportionality and equality). These courts have actually cancelled some effects of the UN Sanctions; to this extent, they have solved in favor of human rights the conflict between the international obligation to implement UN sanctions and the fundamental rights. When economic sanctions are decided by a State or a group of States (e.g. the EU) outside an international obligation (“unilateral sanctions”), i.e. when sanctions are not decided by the UN Security Council, there is no conflict between two international obligations. Accordingly, if the persons targeted by unilateral sanctions seize courts to defend their fundamental rights, further (and bold) developments of the legal science may be expected.

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