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168 | Zsolt Nagy, Zoltán Simon, Viktor Szép, and Tamás Dezső Ziegler crisis management (33%), and post-conflict management (27%). These are followed by the EU’s willingness to uphold certain international norms (15%), interests’ promotion (13%), non-proliferation (9%), and finally terrorism (7%) (Giumelli et al. 2021, 12-13). Despite the increased political willingness to pay the price for implementing sanctions, scholars have rightly pointed to inconsistencies with regard to their practice. The Union, for instance, imposed sanctions against Myanmar for violations of minimum labour rights, whereas it failed to adopt similar measures against Pakistan for the same violations in the same year. Similarly, the EU used sanctions against Zimbabwe for violating fundamental principles of democracy, but adopted no measures against Nigeria for the same behaviour in the subsequent year (Fürrutter 2020). This lack of consistency, at least in the area of sanctions, can often be explained by “considerable commercial or strategic EU interests ... at stake in the target countries” (Portela and Orbie 2014, 72). Whenever the Union decides to impose sanctions, it rarely does it alone. There is along tradition of cooperating with like-minded third countries, such as the United States or Canada. Recently, the EU-US summit of 2021 also underlined the importance of enhancing coordination in sanctions matters. This cooperation between the EU and US proved to be beneficial for both sides on various occasions, such as in the cases of Iran or Russia. The case of Belarus also demonstrates the importance of transatlantic cooperation when it comes to enhancing the effectiveness of international sanctions mechanisms (Van Elsuwege and Szép 2022). The EU’s neighbouring states, in most of the cases, have also proven to be reliable partners in this field: enlargement candidate and European Free Trade Association (EFTA) countries tend to implement almost all EU sanctions. Although with more fluctuations, potential candidate and Eastern Partnership countries cooperate with the Union on sanctions matters as well, although rather on a case-by-case basis (Szép and Van Elsuwege 2020, 229). a. Extraterritorial sanctions Nevertheless, the United States is not only a partner in sanctions matters but, as the past few years clearly demonstrated, can also harm EU interests. Today, an important question in the Unions sanctions policy is how to reduce the extraterritorial impact of certain US sanctions. The prominent role of the dollar in global finances allows Washington to threaten non-US actors, including European entities, to restrict their access to American markets if they engage with partners that are subject to US sanctions. In particular, recent American measures against Russia and Iran discouraged EU operators to do business with US targets. Clearly, the limitations imposed by these extraterritorial sanctions are at odds with the EU’s ambition to strengthen its strategic sovereignty. In fact,
