Today, Monday, the European Union foreign ministers intend to adopt a new sanctions mechanism to combat gross violations of human rights, during their meeting in Brussels.
The regulation, negotiated under the current German presidency of the Council of the European Union, will allow for the possibility of freezing the assets of people, companies and organizations involved in torture, slavery or systematic sexual violence, for example.
In addition, an entry ban will be imposed on those involved in these violations.
So far, human rights violations can only be punished in the context of punitive measures against states or within the framework of special sanctions regimes such as those established by the European Union to combat cyber attacks and the use of chemical weapons.
So far, this has made it difficult or impossible for the European Union to respond to human rights violations, such as the horrific killing of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi at his country's consulate in Istanbul.
The member states of the Union reached a political agreement on the new list last week.
The list comes along the lines of the so-called "Global Magnitsky Law" of the United States.
The US Congress passed this law in 2016 to impose sanctions on individuals responsible for the death of the Russian lawyer and reviewer Sergey Magnitsky, who died in pretrial detention in a Russian prison in 2009, after being ill-treated and deprived of necessary medical care.
Other topics to be discussed at the foreign ministers ’meeting are: the continuing tensions with Turkey, and the situation in Venezuela and Georgia after the elections there.