The European Council extended by six months the European Union terrorist list that established restrictive measures against 14 people and 21 entities, the EC said in a July 19 news release. The restrictions include an asset freeze and were initially established following the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. The sanctions, reviewed at least every six months, are now set to expire in January 2022. The terrorist list is separate from the EU's al-Qaida and ISIL sanctions regime.

The European Union is challenging Russia's government procurement policies, the bloc said in a July 19 news release. The EU is requesting consultations with Russia via the World Trade Organization dispute resolution process over three policies that restrict or prevent EU companies from selling to Russian state-owned enterprises. It cited Russia's discriminatory assessments of procurement bids, requirements for prior authorizations and national quota requirements in procurement. When the Russian entities assess goods for procurement, certain SOEs will deduct 15% to 30% from the offered price for domestic goods but still charge full price if the Russian bid is selected, putting foreign interests at a disadvantage. Such restrictions have been building since 2015, the release said. The economic impact of this has been “significant," with the value of published tenders by Russian SOEs in 2019 totaling over 290 billion euros and equivalent to 21% of Russia's GDP.

The United Kingdom opened a consultation period for interested parties to help shape new trading rules for developing countries, the Department for International Trade said in a July 19 news release. The proposed Developing Countries Trading Scheme would apply to 70 countries and includes lowering tariffs and simplifying rules of origin requirements for exports to the U.K., it said. The new scheme would look to take a “simpler, more generous, pro-growth approach to trading with developing countries,” the release said. The consultation period for the new rules will run for eight weeks.

The United Kingdom's Office of Financial Sanctions Implementation amended the listing for Anwar Ahmed Khan under its Global Human Rights sanctions regime, in a July 16 update. Khan, a Pakistani national and former senior superintendent of police in Pakistan's Malir District, was “responsible for numerous staged police encounters in which hundreds of individuals were extra-judicially killed by police,” his listing says.

The EU General Court annulled the sanctions listing of Xavier Antonio Moreno Reyes, the secretary general of the National Electoral Council of Venezuela, in a July 14 ruling. The court dropped the sanctions designation after finding that the European Council had not established that the reasons for his listing were "well founded." The sanctions listing was not well-founded since the council did not show that Moreno Reyes approved the decisions of the National Electoral Council.

The European Commission began a review of existing antidumping duties on sodium cyclamate from China, a June 28 notice in the Official Journal of the European Union said. Productos Aditivos requested the review following the publication of the expiration notice for the duties. The commission will decide if an extension of the duties is necessary to further protect the European sodium cyclamate industry, the notice said. The period under investigation is July 1, 2020, to June 30, 2021.

The European Commission believes that a consolidated text proposed by the chair of the fisheries ministerial meeting in the World Trade Organization can pave the way for the final part of the negotiations, the commission said in a July 15 news release. “Protecting global fisheries resources is a shared responsibility and, as such, achieving a multilateral outcome is the only way to address the issue of harmful subsidies,” Executive Vice President and Commissioner for Trade Valdis Dombrovskis said in a statement. “We welcome” WTO Director General Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala’s “commitment to reaching an agreement ahead of the 12th Ministerial Conference and we are fully committed to this objective. The mandate laid out in UN Sustainable Development Goal 14.6 must remain our guide in these negotiations.”

European Union candidate countries of North Macedonia, Montenegro and Albania along with the European Free Trade Association nations of Iceland and Norway aligned their sanctions regimes with that of the European Union on Belarus, the European Council said in a July 13 news release. The newest wave of sanctions on Belarus banned the sale, transfer or export of dual-use goods and technologies for military use to anyone in Belarus (see 2106250009). The sanctions concern the May 23 forced landing of a Ryanair flight and subsequent arrest of journalist Roman Protasevich and his girlfriend, Sofia Sapega.

The European Council introduced a new "buy and donate" directive that imposes a temporary value-added tax exemption on imports of certain supplies in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, according to a July 13 press release. The goal is to make it easier for the European Commission and European Union agencies to purchase goods and services then distribute them for free to member states. "Through this update, purchases of goods and services by an EU body on behalf of member states to respond to the emergency posed by the COVID-19 pandemic are temporarily added to the list of exempted transactions in the VAT directive," the release said. The directive will apply retroactively from Jan. 1, 2021.

The European Parliament passed a resolution on July 8 calling for sanctions on high-ranking Nicaraguan officials responsible for human rights violations. The resolution called for President Daniel Ortega, Vice-President Rosario Murillo and their "inner circle" to be sanctioned while "taking particular care to do no harm to the Nicaraguan people." The resolution points to an increasingly dire situation following the "violent repression of civic protests" in April 2018, after which more than 100,000 people have been forced to flee the Central American nation.