EU lifts sanctions on Syria in energy and transport sectors

On Monday, the Council decided to maintain the lists linked to the Assad regime, but approved the lifting of broad sanctions on key sectors such as energy, transport and financial sectors.

EU foreign ministers decided on Monday to suspend a series of far-reaching sanctions against Syria to help the country’s economic recovery and reconstruction after almost 14 years of civil war.

The Council decided to remove five financial institutions (Industrial Bank, People’s Credit Bank, Savings Bank, Agricultural Cooperative Bank and Syrian Arab Airlines) from the list of entities subject to the freezing of funds and economic resources and to allow funds and economic resources to be made available to the Central Bank of Syria.

The EU also suspended measures in the oil, gas, electricity and transport sectors and introduced exceptions to the ban on banking relations between Syrian banks and EU financial institutions to facilitate transactions for humanitarian and reconstruction purposes, as well as in the energy and transport sectors.

EU could backtrack and reimpose sanctions

The bloc will monitor the situation in the country to ensure the suspensions remain appropriate, with EU Foreign Minister Kaja Kallas stressing that “if everything goes wrong, we are also ready to reimpose sanctions”.

“Any kind of government must be inclusive and take into account all groups in Syria,” she said. Most of the EU sanctions were imposed after Bashar al-Assad’s violent crackdown on Syrian protesters in 2011, including sweeping restrictions on trade, financial transactions and key sectors such as energy and transport.

The sanctions have led to a collapse in economic relations between the EU and Syria, with trade flows worth €396bn by 2023. Bashar al-Assad’s regime was toppled in December last year by the Islamist group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), which has since called for the lifting of the sweeping sanctions to help the war-torn country’s economy.

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There have also been calls to remove HTS and its leader Ahmed al-Sharaa from international terrorist lists, but the Council decided to maintain them in relation to the al-Assad regime, as well as those related to arms trafficking, dual-use goods, the chemical weapons sector and illicit drug trafficking, among others. The EU blacklist, updated in November, includes 318 individuals and 86 entities. All are subject to asset freezes and travel bans.

Sanctions hamper country's economic recovery

More than 90% of Syrians live below the poverty line and at least 16.5 million people in Syria depend on some form of humanitarian assistance to cover their basic needs, according to a report by the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA).

Last week, Human Rights Watch (HRW) warned that comprehensive sanctions imposed by the EU, US, and UK on Syria are hampering the country’s economic recovery and preventing millions of Syrians from accessing essential services such as electricity, health care, water, and education.

“Rather than using broad sectoral sanctions as leverage to change policy objectives, Western governments should acknowledge their direct harm to civilians and take meaningful steps to lift restrictions that impede access to basic rights. A piecemeal approach of temporary waivers and limited exemptions is not enough. Sanctions that harm civilians must be lifted immediately,” said Hiba Zayadin, senior Syria researcher at Human Rights Watch.