The General Court of the European Union (CJEU) on Wednesday annulled the European sanctions against Dmitry Ovsiannikov, governor of Sevastopol between 2017 and 2019, finding that once he left office no responsibility can be attributed for the violation of the territorial integrity of Crimea.
Ovsiannikov was governor of Sevastopol during the illegal Russian annexation of Crimea and subsequently served as deputy minister of Industry and Trade of the Russian government until 2020, being first included in the European sanctions regime in 2017 and appearing in successive extensions until 2022.
In its ruling on Wednesday, the CJEU annuls the extensions of the sanctions including the former Russian leader as the Council failed to properly examine Ovsiannikov’s situation and consider his evolution as he went through different positions and ended up leaving politics, eventually splitting from the ruling United Russia party. In this regard, the periodic renewal of the sanctions did not include updates on his status as deputy minister and incurred a failure of justification.
Apart from this, the Luxembourg-based court argues that the EU cannot rely on his position as a former governor of the Russian-occupied territory to continue applying sanctions, as it notes that it cannot be «presumed» that he is still actively involved in the threats for which he was first sanctioned.
In this regard, it accuses the Council of «making an error of assessment and reversing the burden of proof» by considering that, simply because of his status as a former governor of Sevastopol, and statements made in that capacity, and as a former deputy minister of the Russian government, «he was still responsible for or actively supporting policies.»
For the CJEU, the European sanctions are based on declarations and his taking positions on the annexation of Crimea, when he was governor of Sevastopol, something that cannot justify maintaining the sanctions to this day. «The content of the same does not go beyond the average public discourse expected of someone occupying the aforementioned position,» the judgment assures.
«On the other hand, those mainly oral statements, all from 2017 and referring to a short period of that year when he was governor of Sevastopol, cannot be taken into account outside the context in which they occurred and, in any event, exhausted their effects at the time when they were made, so that, by themselves, they could no longer justify maintaining the restrictive measures against him», the CJEU has assessed.
