The European Union has extended its individual sanctions against Russia for a further six months, but the process has laid bare growing fault lines within the bloc over who gets delisted, why, and whether the EU’s own courts have any practical bearing on the answer.
The rollover did produce some movement. Dutch oil trader Niels Troost, sanctioned in 2024 for trading Russian oil in breach of EU price caps, was removed from the list after Council legal services assessed the case against him as weak. It was a legal judgement, straightforwardly applied. The contrast with the treatment of two other contested names, Mikhail Fridman and Alisher Usmanov, did not go unnoticed.
Hungary and Slovakia had pushed for both men to be delisted, arguing that circumstances had materially changed. Fridman sold his stake in Alfa-Bank, Russia’s largest private lender, in 2024, keeping minimal exposure to Russia. Usmanov retired from active business nearly a decade ago and relocated to his native Uzbekistan, where he has focused on philanthropic activities.
Other member states were unmoved. Slovakia then offered a compromise not an immediate delisting, but a conditional pledge to remove both men if and when the Court of Justice of the EU rules in their favour. It found no support in the Council.
That rejection has drawn scrutiny, not least because the CJEU has already annulled the sanctions imposed on Fridman for the 2022–2023 period, finding the evidentiary basis insufficient. If the Council were confident the current designations would survive legal challenge, accepting a mechanism that ties delisting to a favorable ruling would have posed minimal political risk. The refusal to do so invites a harder inference that the legal foundations may be more vulnerable than the political consensus behind them.
The case of another Russian billionaire Dmitry Pumpyansky illustrates the dynamic at its most acute. He stepped down from his companies, challenged his listing, and won twice. The General Court annulled his sanctions in June 2024. The Council reimposed them under revised justifications. The Court annulled them again in September 2025, finding that press articles, company registry excerpts and references to attendance at official events did not establish ongoing economic influence. The Council renewed the listing regardless.
While some sanctioned individuals have successfully challenged their listings before EU courts, such cases remain relatively rare. Those who have been delisted through judicial proceedings have often been lower-profile figures, including family members of sanctioned individuals, rather than major business figures.
Critics argue the pattern reveals something Brussels is reluctant to state plainly the imposition and lifting of sanctions is a political act, not a legal one. Sanctions are adopted by unanimous vote among member state governments, and it is there, not in any courtroom, where the operative decisions are made. Judicial proceedings remain formally available to designated individuals, but a favorable ruling carries no guarantee of practical effect. The opacity of the designation criteria compounds the concern. Among the ten wealthiest Russians in published rankings, roughly half face no EU sanctions at all. No public criteria adequately explain why one billionaire is listed while another with comparable Kremlin exposure is not.
The compromise that ended the standoff was a six month rollover shorter than the twelve months many member states had sought with a full review of the list scheduled ahead of the September renewal. The divisions that surfaced during negotiations are unlikely to have resolved themselves by then.
