Live now in the European Parliament, a hearing of International Criminal Court Judges that have been sanctioned by the US. Judge Hohler is describing how difficult it is to do every-day things with no European alternative to things such as a Credit Card, and reports of having been de-banked, among other things.
https://multimedia.europarl.europa.eu/en/webstreaming/juri-committee-meeting_20260224-1500-COMMITTEE-JURI
Committee on Legal Affairs Joint JURI-DROI - Multimedia Centre
The multimedia platform of the European Parliament is the official public available repository of the media production of the Secretariat of the European Parliament, managed by the Directorate-General for Communication (DG COMM).
Michael Stelzer HoU of the
@EUCommission's DG FISMA.E.5 describes the conditions around invoking the Council’s blocking statute that would prevent European companies from complying with extraterritorial sanctions (I found this, haven’t read it in detail yet:
https://www.atlanticcouncil.org/blogs/econographics/could-the-eu-blocking-statute-protect-the-icc-from-us-sanctions/)
Could the EU 'blocking statute' protect the ICC from US sanctions?
The new US sanctions targeting ICC personnel could severely disrupt the Court’s operations—particularly if Dutch banks suspend financial services to the ICC out of fear of violating US sanctions.
Here’s an info page of the
@EUCommission on the blocking statute, I’m not sure if I understood well that it has already been invoked partially, but according to the speakers, not effectively?
https://finance.ec.europa.eu/eu-and-world/open-strategic-autonomy/extraterritoriality-blocking-statute_en
Extraterritoriality (Blocking statute)
Protecting EU operators, reinforcing European strategic autonomy.
The remote speaker, the name of which I missed, made a good point that there may likely be a chilling effect: European businesses not complying with US coercive measures risk pressure and fines for non-compliance in the US. So even when the blocking statute is invoked, they may be incentivised to stop their business relations with those sanctioned for any other reason.
Sebastian Raible