Sanctions in Latin America

The European Union (EU), with its current 27 members, has also increasingly used sanctions. In EU jargon they are known as “restrictive measures”. To be approved they require unanimous support from the bloc’s key decision-making body, the Council of the European Union. Since 1992 the EU has applied sanctions more than 30 times. Sanctions imposed on Iran in 2012 – and later lifted in 2015 after an agreement was reached on that country’s nuclear development - have been regarded as a turning point since they were the first time a country had been targeted (previous EU sanctions were mainly focused only on individuals and companies).