EU Parliament Suggests Making Corruption Punishable by Sanctions

MOSCOW (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 09th July, 2021) The European Parliament on Thursday proposed to add corruption to the list of actions punishable by EU sanctions under the bloc's global human rights sanctions regime.

"Parliament has adopted a resolution welcoming the EU Global Human Rights Sanctions Regime [GHRSR] while calling for corruption to be included as a punishable offence," the parliament's statement read.

The MEPs believe that corruption damages the concept of human rights and undermines the rule of law, while staying out of the scope of the current GHRSR, introduced in December 2020. In this regard, they urged the EU Commission to form a legislative proposal to extend the GHRSR mandate to cover corruption.

In addition, the Parliament recommends that sanctions should be adopted by a qualified majority vote of the countries of the bloc rather than the absolute consent of all member states which is in effect now.

In early March, Brussels imposed the first sanctions under the new global human rights sanctions regime on four Russian officials over their alleged links to the case of opposition figure Alexey Navalny. Later that month, eleven more people and four entities were added to the sanctions list, including those originating from China, Russia, Libya, South Sudan, and North Korea.

The sanctions include a travel ban across the EU for certain individuals, and the freezing of assets on EU territory for both individuals and entities.