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Global Europe and strategic sovereignty | 167
Nowadays, scholars increasingly return to fundamental questions related
to this policy area. Below, Figure 12 shows how the EU has progressively
enlarged its sanctions portfolio over time. The average time of a sanctions
episode has lasted for 4.5 years (55 months), but different sanctions cases show
significant variation: while restrictive measures against the Federal Republic
of Yugoslavia were only in force for a single month in 2000, sanctions against
Myanmar have now lasted for 275 months.
Time frame is not the only variable that shows significant differences:
EU policymakers always need to decide carefully which type of sanction is
the best for advancing their foreign and security policy objectives. Statistics
show that the EU mostly relies on travel bans (75%) and asset freezes (62%),
followed by arms embargoes (46%), as well as trade (18%), financial (16%),
and diplomatic (11%) restrictions (Giumelli et al. 2021, 10-11)
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Figure 12: The number of EU sanctions regimes in force over time
Source: Giumelli et al. 2021, 9
In the field of sanctions, the EU has become a truly international actor in
the sense that it has been targeting states from all around the world. The
Union has so far designated individuals and entities from Asia (33%), Africa
(26%), and Europe (25%), followed by the Americas (6%), on its sanctions
lists (Giumelli et al. 2021, 12). Interestingly enough, this latter is the region
where most divergence can be observed in the transatlantic space: while
Washington has traditionally targeted Latin American individuals and entities
more frequently, Brussels has refrained from joining these measures and,
for example, only blacklisted its first Venezuelan targets in 2017 (Portela
2020b, 122).
Usually, the EU imposes sanctions for different reasons. Amongst them, the
three most important ones have been: the promotion of democracy (44%),