Transnational Parliamentary Activities in EU Foreign Policy: The Role of Parliamentarians in the Establishment of the EU's Global Human Rights Sanctions Regime

Abstract

Although the literature is increasingly interested in the parliamentary dimension of EU foreign policy, to this point no research has covered the role of parliamentarians in EU sanctions policy. This article argues that parliamentarians were successful in keeping the issue of a human rights sanctions regime on the EU's agenda and used all the tools at their disposal to push the EU foreign policy‐making machinery in the direction of adopting a new sanctions regime. This article does not limit itself to the study of the European Parliament but argues that parliamentary assemblies of different levels (national, cross‐level and European) are interconnected and worked together intensively on the adoption of the EU's human rights sanctions regime.