Thank you, Mr. Chairman and members of the committee, for the invitation to speak. It's a great honour for me to be in Ottawa with you today.
If I may, I will briefly present an outline of my research interests and expertise in relation to sanctions. I am an EU law academic, working at the interface of law and politics in the EU. My specific focus is on the external relations of the European Union, which is "EU-speak" for what's generally covered by the foreign policy of a nation-state.
I've been particularly interested in the institutional questions and the place of law in what's generally assumed to be a political domain. There has been, since the EU's treaty of Maastricht, 1992, a growing amount of EU law relating to external relations as the EU has attempted to gain a greater voice in international affairs. There's been a gradual, partial move away from the characterization of EU foreign policy from intergovernmental to supranational.
My interest in sanctions is thus as an expression of the EU's foreign policy. I published an article entitled “The Legalisation of European Union Foreign Policy and the Use of Sanctions” in 2015 in the Cambridge Yearbook of European Legal Studies. I argued there that the EU is far from being ineffective as a foreign policy actor, which is a claim that's frequently been applied to the EU since its inability to respond to the breakup of Yugoslavia in the early 1990s.
The willingness that the EU has shown to put in place autonomous sanctions demonstrates its ability to do things as well as say things, most notably, of course, on Russia, since 2014. The process of imposing sanctions, which cover internal market aspects of the EU and thus the legal competence of the EU institutions, is one that fuses legal and political aspects but often has gone unnoticed. The institutional difficulties in seeking agreement between 27 member states should also not be understated. If there is agreement, the EU is capable of being powerful, but if there's no internal agreement, much less so.
My most recent work on sanctions was published in 2022, with Dr Erica Moret, whom you met earlier this week. It focused on a trend since the mid-2000s to invite third states around the EU's borders to align with EU sanctions. Such states include closely integrated but non-EU members, including Iceland, Norway, Liechtenstein, applicants for membership in the western Balkans, Turkey, Ukraine, Moldova and Georgia, and other members of the EU's eastern partnership, Armenia and Azerbaijan.
We looked at the EU's 30-plus sanctions regimes and the hundreds of instances where sanctions have been imposed or built upon. We found that typically five to 10 additional states that are not EU members undertake publicly to align themselves. EU sanctions regimes, therefore, cover not only the 27 member states but also up to 35 to 40 states altogether, almost a third of the UN members.
Leaving aside the key question of whether sanctions do in fact make a difference, the place of autonomous, non-UN sanctions as the go-to foreign policy instrument of the EU demonstrates its success in putting together foreign policy. We also found some evidence that the potential weight of EU sanctions provides an opportunity for strengthened co-operation with other countries such as Canada, and groupings, including the Arab League.
Finally, as a U.K.-based academic, I've had to confront the reality of Brexit and the requirement to pass legislation and policy independently of the EU. The U.K. now has no formal institutionalized framework for foreign and security policy with the EU. It has its own post-Brexit sanctions regime, the Sanctions and Anti-Money Laundering Act 2018. The early signs here are that there is little difference in practice between U.K. and EU sanctions in terms of content or geographical scope, though this might be changed in the future.
I apologize in advance that my expertise does not extend specifically to Canadian law and policy, but I hope I will be able to answer your questions relating to my research.
Thank you.