EU Sanctions in Response to Intra-state Conflicts: A Comparative Approach

Restrictive measures (or sanctions) form an important part of the European Union's (EU's) foreign policy toolbox. Studying the conditions under which the EU imposes sanctions is therefore imperative for understanding EU's role in the global arena. This article aims at modelling the use of EU sanctions particularly in response to intra-state conflicts in its neighbourhood. Four variables (trade linkage with the EU as whole; trade linkage with individual Member States; democracy level of the potential target state; and violence level of the intra-state conflict) are tested against data from ten intra-state conflicts from EU's neighbourhood using a comparative mixed-method methodology of fuzzy-set analysis and process-tracing. We identify the lack of strong trade linkage between individual Member States and the potential target state as a sufficient condition for the imposition of sanctions. In addition, the presence of bilateral trade links is a necessary, and if the potential target state is a democracy, sufficient condition for the non-imposition of sanctions.