International Relations Commons^™

Are European Union Sanctions “Targeted”?, Clara Portela

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

The emergence of targeted sanctions in the mid-1990s was due to the humanitarian impact of embargoes, which were deemed unacceptable and compelled senders to shift to measures designed to affect only wrongdoers. Twenty years on, the present paper considers the extent to which autonomous sanctions are designed to affect those individuals and elites responsible for the behaviour the EU aims to condemn. How faithful has the EU remained to this concept in its sanctions policy? The enquiry scrutinizes diverse practices in three established sanctions strands of the EU, development aid suspensions, Common Foreign and Security Policy (CFSP) sanctions and Generalised …

Piling On: The Rise Of Sanctions Cooperation Between Regional Organizations, The United States, And The Eu, Inken Von Borzyskowski, Clar Portela

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

Of all the countries identified as rising powers on the world stage, Brazil appears to have drawn considerable economic and political strength from its engagement with various forms of regionalism during the expansionist years when Lula was president. Whether by helping create a local, intra-regional entity (Mercosul) or, later, proposing a continental one (UNASUL), Brasilia appeared to have the capacity to further its own economic and political interests by generating cooperative interactions with its smaller neighbors. Subsequently it took a leading role in inter-regional negotiations between Mercosul and the European Union in the global North and between Mercosul and ASEAN …

How The Eu Learned To Love Sanctions, Clara Portela

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

It is only recently that the European public has woken up to the sue of sanctions in EU foreign policy, though they have been employed since the early 1980s. They became more frequent following the 1992 establishment of the Common Foreign and Security Policy (CFSP), the EU's intergovernmental forum for foreign policy coordination.

One Swallow Does Not Make Spring: A Critical Juncture Perspective On The Eu Sanctions In Response To The Arab Spring, Andreas Boogaerts, Clara Portela, Edith Drieskens

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

This article examines to what extent the Arab Spring constitutes a critical juncture – a major turning point – for the EU’s sanctions policy towards Egypt, Libya, Syria and Tunisia. Based on a multidimensional critical juncture operationalization, we find that the Arab Spring only constitutes such a turning point for the EU’s sanctions policy towards Syria. Both the level and nature of measures differ substantially from previous years. By contrast, the EU’s sanctions practice towards Libya, Egypt and Tunisia shows more resilience. More generally, changes in the nature of the measures are prominent, whereas changes in the level of the …

Eu Sanctions In Context: Three Types, Thomas Biersteker, Clara Portela

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

All international sanctions are embedded in larger contexts of overlapping policy instruments and other sanctions regimes. Yet we tend to look at sanctions and evaluate their effectiveness from the vantage point of a single sender of sanctions – whether it is the UN, the EU, or an individual country like the United States – rather than consider the combined and interactive effects of different, co-existing sanctions regimes. EU sanctions tend to be imposed in conjunction with measures by other actors: their interplay deserves closer analysis in terms of sequencing, objectives, complexity and legitimacy. The latter is particularly important, given recent …

Sanctions Against Belarus: Normative Unintended, Clara Portela

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

The goals pursued by the EU vis-à-vis Belarus through its sanctions policies are unequivocally normative. The EU refers to the ‘violations of international electoral standards’ in the 2006 presidential elections and the ‘crackdown on civil society and democratic opposition’ as the primary reasons for the imposition of sanctions. The EU sanctions strategy against Belarus has followed an incrementalist logic, unfolding in parallel to the evolution of the Belarusian state towards authoritarianism.

Aid Suspensions As Coercive Tools? The European Union’S Experience In The African-Caribbean-Pacific (Acp) Context, Clara Portela

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

Since the signing of the Cotonou Agreement in 2000, the European Union (EU) has suspended development aid towards a number of African Caribbean and Pacific (ACP) countries in response to breaches of Human Rights and democratic principles by activating the so-called Human Rights clause (article 96). The present article analyses the use by the EU of aid suspensions as political tools and their efficacy in achieving the desired policy goals, in an attempt to identify and explain the determinants leading to the success of these measures. The investigation finds that the use of development aid suspensions is frequently effective. Classical …

The Role Of The Eu In The Non-Proliferation Of Nuclear Weapons: The Way To Thessaloniki And Beyond, Clara Portela

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

Over the past few years the EU has begun taking some steps against the spread of nuclear weapons within its Common Foreign and Security Policy (CFSP). At the Thessaloniki Summit June 2003, the European Council adopted its first draft Strategy against the proliferation of Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD). In order to assess the significance of the Strategy, this paper will first present and evaluate the Union’s record in the field, then review the newly released Strategy, and finally make suggestions as to how it can be improved.

The EU is not an unitary actor in the nuclear non-proliferation domain, …