EU Sanctions: A Relevant Foreign Policy Tool? EU Diplomacy Paper No. 3, May 2014
Journal: Archive of European Integration (AEI) (University of Pittsburgh)
Year: 2014

This paper examines an instrument which establishes an explicit link between economic power and foreign policy of the European Union (EU): restrictive measures or sanctions. As the EU is increasingly confronted with situations requiring a firm response, sanctions – arguably the EU’s ‘hardest’ tool – have become somewhat of a standard reaction. To what extent are sanctions a relevant tool for EU external action? By looking at several case studies from a set of 47 autonomous EU sanction cases, thi