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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) 30 20 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%),
