The CJEU removes a former governor of Sevastopol from the EU sanctions list

BRUSELAS, 26 Oct. (EUROPA PRESS) -

The General Court of the European Union (CJEU) has annulled this Wednesday the European sanctions that weighed against Dimitri Ovsiannikov, governor of Sevastopol between 2017 and 2019, considering that once he left office, responsibility cannot be attributed in the violation of the territorial integrity of Crimea.

Ovsiannikov was governor of Sevastopol during Russia's illegal annexation of Crimea and was later Deputy Minister of Industry and Commerce of the Russian Government until 2020, being included for the first time in the European sanctions regime in 2017 and appearing in successive extensions until 2022.

In its ruling this Wednesday, the CJEU annuls the extensions of the sanctions that include the former Russian leader as the Council has not properly examined Ovsiannikov's situation and considered his evolution since he went through different positions and ended up leaving politics, eventually separating from the ruling United Russia party. In this sense, the periodic renewal of the sanctions did not include updates on his situation as deputy minister and incurred a justification ruling.

Apart from this, the Luxembourg-based court argues that the EU cannot claim its position as the former governor of the territory occupied by Russia to continue applying sanctions, since it indicates that it cannot be "presumed" that it continues to be actively involved in the threats by the who was sanctioned for the first time.

In this regard, he accuses the Council of "incurring an error of assessment and inverting the burden of proof" by considering that, simply because of his status as former governor of Sevastopol, and for statements made in that capacity, and as former deputy minister of the Russian government, "remained responsible for policies or actively supported them."

For the CJEU, the European sanctions are based on statements and his positions on the annexation of Crimea, when he was governor of Sevastopol, something that cannot justify maintaining the sanctions today. "The content of the same does not go beyond the average of the public speech that is expected of someone who occupies the aforementioned position," says the sentence.

"On the other hand, these mainly oral demonstrations, all from 2017 and referring to a brief period of said year in which he was governor of Sevastopol, cannot be taken into account outside the context in which they occurred and, in any case, exhausted their effects at the time they were carried out, so that, by themselves, they could not continue to justify the maintenance of the restrictive measures against him", the CJEU has assessed.