The regime will cover genocide, crimes against humanity and other serious human rights violations such as torture, slavery, extrajudicial killings, arbitrary arrests of detentions. It will also consider other violations or abuses, such as trafficking in human beings or sexual or gender-based violence, as long as those violations or abuses are widespread, systemic or serious.
The decision to list names under the new regime will be taken by Member States, acting unanimously at the Council of the European Union. Civil society will be able to take part in the identification of perpetrators by suggesting names of individuals or entities they consider should be sanctioned. Listed individuals and entities will have the option to challenge their listing at the European Court of Justice.
Over the past year, FIDH has taken part in a civil society coalition that has been advocating for the EU to adopt such a regime to complement existing EU policies and other sanctions regimes under several perspectives, in particular to cover cases in which country-specific sanctions programmes are inappropriate or unfeasible, cross-border cases, and geographic areas outside of government control.