EU Sanctions Policy: A Legal Appraisal in Light of the EU’s Strategic Autonomy Doctrine

The present chapter intends to carry out a legal assessment on the impact of the so-called ‘Strategic Autonomy Doctrine’ (SAD) on the EU sanctions policy, trying to identify how that doctrine may contribute to reshaping the paradigm of the Union’s action in that domain. With this in mind, the present chapter has been organized as follows. Section 2 briefly describes the evolution of the SAD; here, the growing emphasis on the need for the Union to take an assertive (and sovereign) position on the international scene emerging from the relevant practice is stressed, so as to better understand the legal implications the doctrine may determine for the EU sanctions policy. Those implications are analysed in depth in the subsequent sections. In particular, section 3 focuses on the hybridization of the legal tools of the EU sanctions policy, meaning their modification in the light of the changing threats the EU is facing in order to preserve its strategic autonomy, while section 4 looks at the consequences for the interplay with EU constitutional law, international law and member States’ national law. The final section provides a conclusion.