On Monday, the council decided to maintain the lists linked to the regime of Bashar al-Assad, but approved the lifting of large sanctions in key sectors such as energy, transport and finance.
EU foreign ministers decided on Monday to suspend a series of large -scale sanctions against Syria in order to contribute to the economic recovery and the reconstruction of the country after almost 14 years of civil war.
The Council decided to withdraw five financial entities (Industrial Bank, Popular Credit Bank, Saving Bank, Agricultural Cooperative Bank and Syrian Arab Airlines) from the list of entities subject to the frost of funds and economic resources and to authorize the provision of funds and economic resources at the central bank of Syria.
The EU has also suspended sectoral measures in the oil, gas, electricity and transport sectors and has introduced derogations from the ban on banking relations between Syrian banks and EU financial institutions in order to to facilitate transactions for humanitarian and reconstruction purposes, as well as in the energy and transport sectors.
The European Union will monitor the country’s situation to ensure that the suspensions remain appropriate. Kaja Kallas, the highest diplomat in the EU, stressed that “if everything is not going well, we are also ready to restore sanctions”.
“All types of government must be inclusive and take into account all the different groups present in Syria,” she said.
Most EU sanctions were imposed following the violent repression of Bashar al-Assad against the Syrian demonstrators in 2011, in particular vast restrictions on trade, financial transactions and key sectors such as energy and transport.
The sanctions led to the collapse of economic relations between the EU and Syria, with trade flows worth 396 million euros in 2023.
The Al-Assad regime was overthrown last December by the Islamist group Hayat Tahrir al-Cham (HTC), which has since requested large-scale sanctions to help the economy of the country torn apart by war.
Calls were also launched so that the HTC and its chief Ahmed al-Charaa were withdrawn from the international lists of terrorists, but the council decided to maintain these lists with regard to the al-Assad regime, as well as those relating with arms trafficking, double -use goods, the chemical weapons sector and drug trafficking, among others.
There blacklist(link in English) of the EU, which was renewed in November, concerns 318 people and 86 entities. All are the subject of a freezing of assets and a ban on travel.
More than 90 % of Syrians live below the poverty line and at least 16.5 million people in Syria depend on one form or another of humanitarian aid to meet their basic needs, according to a report from the office of The Coordination of United Nations Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA).
Last week, Human Rights Watch (HRW) warned that the general EU, the United States and the United Kingdom sanctions against Syria led to the country’s economic recovery and prevented millions of Syrians from accessing essential services such as electricity, health care, water and education.
“Rather than using large sectoral sanctions as a lever for changing political objectives, Western governments should recognize the direct damage they cause to civilians and take significant measures to remove restrictions that hinder access to fundamental rights” , said Hiba Zayadin, principal researcher on Syria in HRW.
“A fragmentary approach to temporary exemptions and limited derogations is not sufficient. The sanctions that harm civilians should be immediately lifted, and not improved,” added Ms. Zayadin.
Additional sources • Adaptation: Serge Duchêne
