The EU Council decided on Monday to include the violation of sanctions imposed by the European Union in the list of criminal “crimes in the EU.”

“The EU has adopted an unprecedented number of sanctions targeting the Russian economy (…). To achieve results, their implementation requires joint efforts, and today’s decision is an important tool to ensure that any attempts to circumvent these measures will be stopped,” said Pavel Blažek, Minister of Justice of the Czech Republic, which holds the Presidency of the Council of the EU, whose words are quoted in a communiqué published in Brussels.

Member states currently have different definitions of what constitutes a breach of restrictive measures and what penalties should apply in the event of a breach, the document said. “This can lead to varying degrees of sanctions enforcement and the risk of circumventing these measures, potentially allowing sanctioned individuals to continue to access their assets and support regimes targeted by EU measures,” the EU Council communiqué says.

It explained that the inclusion of a breach of restrictive measures on the list of “EU crimes” is the first of two steps to ensure that sanctions are applied equally across the EU and to deter attempts to circumvent or breach EU measures. Following the decision, the European Commission will submit “a proposal for a directive containing minimum rules on the definition of criminal offenses and penalties for breaches of EU restrictive measures.”

This draft directive, Brussels recalls, must then be discussed and adopted by the European Parliament and the EU Council.

The crimes currently listed by the EU are terrorism, trafficking in human beings and sexual exploitation of women and children, drug trafficking, arms trafficking, money laundering, corruption, counterfeiting, computer crime and organized crime. On May 25, 2022, the European Commission submitted a proposal to expand the list of these areas of crime to include the violation of restrictive measures adopted by the EU.