EU plan to blacklist hundreds more Russians risks new boom in litigation

Some lawyers foresee a new boom in Russian litigation at the EU courts in Luxembourg, as Europe prepares to backlist hundreds or even thousands of new names. Russian appetite for anti-sanctions lawsuits has not faded, despite very few of the top oligarchs or politicians having managed to get their names off the list in the past four and a half years, attorneys said. “As far as I am concerned, we are not seeing individuals subject to restrictive measures abandoning their appeals before the European courts. They systematically challenge renewals [of blacklists naming them]”, said Thierry Bontinck, a leading EU sanctions barrister in Brussels. Bontinck’s clients have included ex-Chelsea Football Club owner Roman Abramovich, Kremlin-family industrialist Oleg Deripaska, and Gennady Timchenko, a billionaire and personal friend of Russian president Vladimir Putin. “Both foreign companies – Indian, Chinese – and Russian individuals or entities continue to challenge the restrictive measures,” Bontinck told EUobserver on Thursday (3 September). “Russians are still litigating,” agreed Paris-based EU sanctions lawyer William Julié, who has represented an Azerbaijani-Russian oil baron, Farkhad Akhmedov. “There is no sign of any diminishing appetite to do so – and that is something to be welcomed,” said Julié, because, he added, lawsuits stress-tested the legality of the EU sanctions regime and the rule of law in Europe more broadly speaking. The EU has currently imposed visa bans and asset freezes on some 3,000 mostly Russian individuals and entities for contributing to Putin's full invasion of Ukraine in 2022. The vast majority are mid-ranking politicians, officials, and military commanders, who do not have the means to sue the EU even if they wanted to, given that a sanctions case can cost up to €500,000 in EU lawyers' fees. But litigious Russians, some of whom lost yachts and mansions in Europe, Russian firms, and Russian accomplices in Belarus, Moldova, and Iran (in what Julié called the "Russia cluster") still filed 84 out of the 125 new sanctions law cases before the EU's General Court in 2025, he said.