Publications — European criminal law — 13 October 2026

Russia Asset Freezes: Challenging the Legality of the Extension of 12 October 2026 before the General Court

On 12 October 2026 the Council added 826 Russian entities and 743 Russian company directors to the asset-freeze list, in a single act. Since the Court’s judgment of 26 March 2026 on the leading-businesspersons criterion, the legality of a category criterion is no longer open to argument: an objective link between the category and the objective pursued suffices, even an indirect one, and even one independent of personal conduct. The question therefore shifts entirely to proof of membership of the category. Yet all 1,569 statements of reasons rest on a single document, a register maintained by the Russian government whose purpose is to confer entitlement to a subsidy towards employees’ housing costs, and not one of them alleges the development, production or supply of military equipment that the applicable criterion designates. The comparison with the cases the Council has successfully defended, MegaFon and Abramovich, measures the gap. This study examines the pleas that gap opens up before the General Court, and the criminal exposure that the widened perimeter creates, in France, for those dealing with the persons concerned.

By Naguin Zekkouti, member of the Paris and Lyon Bars

Introduction

Litigation over restrictive measures before the General Court is, in essence, litigation about evidence. Since Commission and Others v Kadi, the listing of a person or an entity on an asset-freeze list must rest on a sufficiently solid factual basis, and it is for the Council, where the listing is contested, to establish that the reasons relied on are well founded and to produce the material on which it relied¹.

The package adopted in Luxembourg on 12 October 2026 tests that requirement in an unprecedented way, by its scale and by the nature of the document on which it rests. In a single act, the Council added 826 entities and 743 natural persons to the annex of the Ukraine regime. The two instruments that carry it run to 948 pages each.

Reading those pages reveals that the reasons given for each listing are built on a single template, and that the template rests on one fact, borrowed from the administration of the very State targeted. The question is therefore not whether the Council could list these persons, but whether it has done so on a basis it is able to defend.

The analysis turns to the acts and the criterion they apply (I), to the finding that the legality of that criterion is no longer open to argument (II), then to what the Council remains bound to prove and what it has produced (III), by comparison with the cases it has successfully defended (IV), before setting out the pleas available to the defence (V), the question of identifying information and time limits (VI), the obligation to declare assets and the timetable it imposes (VII), and finally the criminal exposure of French operators (VIII).

I. Two twin acts, and what they do not say

The package is carried by two instruments adopted on the same day, in Luxembourg, and published in the Official Journal that same day.

Council Decision (CFSP) 2026/2279 of 12 October 2026 amends Decision 2014/145/CFSP concerning restrictive measures in respect of actions undermining or threatening the territorial integrity, sovereignty and independence of Ukraine². It is adopted on the basis of Article 29 of the Treaty on European Union, on a proposal from the High Representative. Article 1 provides that the annex to Decision 2014/145/CFSP is amended as set out in the annex to the decision. Article 2 fixes entry into force on the day of publication.

Council Implementing Regulation (EU) 2026/2281 of 12 October 2026 implements Regulation (EU) No 269/2014, on the basis of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union and of Article 14(1) of that regulation³. Its recitals are identical to those of the decision, save that Annex I to the regulation replaces the annex to the decision. Its two articles are built in the same way.

That structure calls for two observations.

The first concerns the jurisdiction of the Court. The scheme rests on a pair of acts, one falling within the common foreign and security policy, the other within ordinary Union law. Without the proviso in the second paragraph of Article 275 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union, which opens to the Court review of the legality of CFSP decisions providing for restrictive measures against natural or legal persons, half the scheme would escape review altogether. The Court said as much in Rosneft⁴. In practice, the action must be directed against both acts.

The second observation is more singular. Neither instrument cites the listing criterion applied. Neither the citations nor the six recitals refer to Article 2 of Decision 2014/145/CFSP or to Article 3 of Regulation No 269/2014, where the connecting criteria are in fact set out. The basis of the listing can only be guessed at by reading the statement of reasons for each entry, through the formula that closes it: the person ‘is providing material support to Russia’s military and industrial complex’. The defence is therefore entitled to ask the Council to state, before the General Court, the criterion it did not state, and to object that such belated explanation cannot cure a posteriori an inadequate statement of reasons.

The criterion does exist, and it is recent. Council Regulation (EU) 2025/390 of 24 February 2025, adopted as part of the sixteenth package, inserted a point (l) into Article 3(1) of Regulation No 269/2014⁵. In the consolidated version applicable to the acts of 12 October 2026, that of 28 September 2026, the point reads: ‘natural or legal persons, entities or bodies which are part of the Russian military and industrial complex, provide material or financial support to it, or benefit from it, including by participating in the development, production or supply of military equipment and technology’. Article 3(1) now contains fourteen criteria, from (a) to (n); Decision 2014/145/CFSP contains a mirror criterion.

The comparison is instructive. The formulas that close each statement of reasons — ‘is part of Russia’s military and industrial complex’ for entities and ‘is providing material support to Russia’s military and industrial complex’ for directors — are not findings of fact: they reproduce the legal characterisation that the criterion states. The Council does not cite the basis of the listing because it recites it.

There are six recitals. The second refers to the European Council conclusions of 18 and 19 June 2026. The third invokes the continuing Russian aggression and the strikes on civilian infrastructure. The fourth announces the addition of 826 entities and 743 persons. The fifth, on which everything rests, is examined below. The sixth is the closing formula.

It should be noted that no recital deals with the communication of the decision to the persons concerned, with their opportunity to submit observations, or with the periodic review of the annex. Amending acts under this regime usually contain such statements. Their absence plainly does not deprive those concerned of the guarantees they derive from the basic acts and from the Charter, but it is the first indication of the speed with which this package was produced.

II. The legality of the criterion is no longer open to argument

This must be stated plainly, because it is the first objection any well-advised counsel would discard: point (l) cannot be attacked in itself.

By a judgment of the Grand Chamber of 26 March 2026, the Court of Justice dismissed five appeals against judgments of the General Court upholding listings made under the leading-businesspersons criterion, which appears in Article 3(1)(g) of Regulation No 269/2014 and in Article 2(1)(g) of Decision 2014/145/CFSP⁶. The appellants had raised a plea of illegality against that criterion.

The Court recalls that the Council has a broad discretion as regards the subject matter of restrictive measures and as regards the definition and scope of the general criteria, and that only the manifestly inappropriate character of such an act, having regard to the objective pursued, can affect its legality (para 271). It adds that the decision laying down those criteria must disclose an objective link between the categories of persons targeted and the third country concerned, failing which the criterion would be manifestly unfit to attain the objective and would have to be held unlawful (para 273). It infers that a criterion is not unlawful where it targets categories having an objective link, even indirectly, with that third country (para 289). Review of proportionality is confined to verifying that the measure is neither manifestly inappropriate nor manifestly beyond what is necessary (paras 233, 254 and 255). The appeals are dismissed.

Transposed to point (l), the reasoning applies a fortiori. The link between arms production and the objective of increasing the cost of the aggression is more direct still than the link between that same objective and the sectors that generate budget revenue. To argue in 2026 that the military-industrial-complex criterion is unlawful in itself would be an error of strategy as much as of law.

On the legality of the criterion itself, the judgment says no more than that, and point (l) is thereby shielded from any plea of illegality. Proof of membership of the category, by contrast, remains entirely to be made, and it is governed by the standard of Commission and Others v Kadi. That is where, and only where, the litigation over the package of 12 October 2026 will be decided.

The same judgment does, however, say something else, which governs all that follows.

At paragraph 327, the Court recalls that the effectiveness of the judicial review guaranteed by Article 47 of the Charter requires the EU judicature to satisfy itself that the decision, which has individual scope for the person concerned, rests on a sufficiently solid factual basis. That entails verification of the facts alleged in the statement of reasons, so that review is not confined to an assessment of the abstract likelihood of the reasons relied on, but extends to whether those reasons are substantiated. To that end it falls to the judicature to request, where appropriate, that the competent authority produce information and evidence.

At paragraph 328, the Court sets out the method: the General Court had to verify in which economic sectors each of the appellants carried on its activity, and whether those sectors constituted a substantial source of revenue for the Government of the Russian Federation, examining in that regard the evidence produced by the Council. At paragraph 331, it specifies that while the Council is not required to produce all the material inherent in the reasons alleged, the judicature must satisfy itself that the material produced sufficiently substantiates the reasons relied on.

The judgment of 26 March 2026 therefore closes one door and opens another. It relieves the Council of establishing an individual link between the person listed and the government or the war. It requires the Council, in return, to establish by evidence that the person does indeed fall within the category. That is where, and only where, the litigation over the package of 12 October 2026 will be decided.

III. What the Council had to prove, and what it produced

Recital 5, common to both acts, sets out the Council’s approach. The entities concerned appear on a list recently drawn up by the Government of the Russian Federation, which identifies them as belonging to the Russian military and industrial complex and which, on that basis, confers on them an entitlement to subsidies. The Council considers that those entities are therefore part of that complex. The persons concerned hold management positions within them and the Council considers that they support it on that account.

The annex applies that approach across 1,569 entries, following two templates.

The template for entities

Each entity is the subject of two paragraphs. The first states that it has been recorded by the Government of the Russian Federation as part of the Russian military-industrial complex, then adds that, as an employer recorded as active in that complex, it is entitled to receive federal subsidies for its employees’ housing costs. The second concludes: ‘Therefore, [the entity] is part of Russia’s military and industrial complex.’

The logical structure deserves to be isolated. Premiss: the Russian government has recorded the entity as part of the military-industrial complex. Conclusion: the entity is part of the military-industrial complex. The conclusion reproduces the premiss. No middle term connects them, and no fact specific to the entity is stated: not what it produces, nor for whom, nor in what quantity, nor what connection what it produces has with military operations.

The second element, eligibility for housing subsidies, is introduced by the words ‘in addition’, which present it as reinforcement. It is nothing of the kind. That eligibility is the legal consequence of the recording, not a fact distinct from it. The Council thus has a single fact, which it states twice.

The template for directors

Each natural person is the subject of three paragraphs. The first states their functions as chief executive or acting director of named companies, presented as part of the Russian arms industry, ‘which is a sector of strategic importance for the Russian Federation’. The second repeats, for those companies, the governmental recording and the eligibility for housing subsidies. The third concludes that the person ‘is providing material support to Russia’s military and industrial complex’.

The reasons given for the director are therefore wholly derived from those given for the company, which are circular. The defect in the first is transmitted to the second. And the inference that runs from office held to material support is supported by no act, no decision, no statement attributable to the person.

The criterion itself describes the facts that are missing

Point (l) does not merely designate a category. It indicates how membership or support manifests itself: participation in the development, production or supply of military equipment and technology.

Not one of the 1,569 entries alleges anything of the kind. No development, no production, no supply, no contract, no recipient. The Council had a criterion telling it what it had to establish, and it established none of it.

The third limb of the criterion, which covers those who benefit from the military and industrial complex, is no better made out. The only benefit mentioned in the acts is a subsidy paid by the government, not by the complex, and it accrues to the entity precisely because the entity has been recorded as part of that complex. The alleged benefit therefore presupposes the very quality to be demonstrated. The circle closes a second time.

What the single document actually is

The item on which everything rests must be named precisely. It is an administrative register maintained by the government of a third State, whose own purpose, as the acts themselves explain, is to confer on the employers appearing on it an entitlement to a federal subsidy towards their employees’ housing costs. It is an instrument of domestic social policy.

Neither the criteria for inclusion in that register, nor the authority that maintains it, nor the date it was established, nor its reference, are stated. The Council does not say that it verified, cross-checked or supplemented it. It adopts its characterisation.

IV. The contrast with the cases the Council has successfully defended

The criticism acquires its full force only when measured against what the Council is capable of producing when it means to defend a listing. Two recent judgments, both dismissing the actions, give the measure.

In MegaFon, the General Court dismissed the action of a Russian telecommunications operator⁷. The reasons relied on by the Council set out what the company did: the acquisition of dual-use goods and technology capable of supporting the aggression, and the supply of telecommunications services to the Russian army. The General Court found that the Council had given specific and concrete reasons, and that it had made no error of assessment.

In Abramovich, the General Court dismissed the action against the maintenance of the measures⁸. The Council there produced the extent of the applicant’s shareholdings, his position as principal shareholder of Evraz, his interests in Norilsk Nickel, and Evraz’s 2021 annual report establishing that steel accounted for 66.3% of turnover. The General Court verified, on the documents, that the sector constituted a substantial source of revenue for the Russian government.

Two cases, two dismissals, and in each a verifiable fact connecting the person or the entity to the category: a delivery, a customer, a shareholding, a percentage drawn from an accounting document.

Measured against that yardstick, the 1,569 listings of 12 October 2026 contain no fact of that kind. Not a delivery, not a customer, not a contract, not a figure. The only material produced is presence on a register whose declared purpose is the grant of a housing subsidy.

The comparison is not rhetorical, it is evidential. It establishes that the standard applied by the General Court is attainable, that the Council knows how to meet it when it takes the trouble, and that it has not taken the trouble here. That is precisely what an applicant must demonstrate: not that the criterion is unlawful, but that its application to his case rests on less than what the Court ordinarily requires.

The objection the Council will raise

Two replies are foreseeable, and they must be dealt with before filing.

The first concerns the nature of the document. The Council will contend that a recording carried out by the Russian government itself is particularly reliable, since it emanates from the State that organises that complex and amounts to a statement against its own interest. The argument has weight, but it bears only on the sincerity of the register, not on its scope. A document that is truthful as to what it states — eligibility for a housing subsidy — does not thereby become probative as to what it does not state, namely the production of military equipment. The reliability of the source does not make up for the irrelevance of the fact.

The second concerns the standard of proof. The Council will recall that restrictive measures are preventive and not punitive, that they involve no finding of guilt, and that the standard of proof required is accordingly lighter. That is correct, and the Court confirmed it on 26 March 2026 by confining its review to manifest error. But the relaxation bears on the nature of the material, not on its existence: it permits the Council to rely on open sources and on a body of indicia, it does not permit it to rely on a single item which does not establish the fact to be proved. MegaFon and Abramovich show as much: in both, the Council produced facts, and that is why it won.

V. The pleas available to the defence

Inadequate statement of reasons

The complaint is not drawn solely from Article 296 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union. It has a textual basis of its own here: Article 3(2) of Regulation No 269/2014 provides that Annex I is to include the grounds for listing the persons, entities and bodies concerned.

A statement of reasons whose conclusion reproduces its premiss, identical for 826 entities save for the name, puts the person concerned in a position neither to know what is held against him, nor to respond effectively, nor the Court to exercise its review. It is not deficient on one point: it is empty of any individual element.

The defect is of a particular nature here, and it is demonstrated by a mere reading. The reasons are composed of two elements: the literal reproduction of the legal criterion, which is the conclusion to be established, and a single fact, the recording on a Russian housing-subsidy register, which does not entail it. Between the two, nothing. It is settled case-law that reproducing the terms of a listing criterion does not serve as a statement of reasons: it states the characterisation adopted without stating the specific and concrete reasons for which the Council took the view that the person satisfied it.

The insufficiently solid factual basis

This is the heart of the case. Commission and Others v Kadi requires the reasons relied on to be substantiated by a sufficiently solid factual basis and the Council, where the listing is contested, to produce the material on which it relied. A characterisation borrowed from the administration of the State targeted is not evidence adduced.

The approach gives rise to three distinct objections.

The purpose of the register is unrelated to the object of the measure. A scheme designed to subsidise employees’ housing responds to concerns of social policy and workforce management. Nothing guarantees that its inclusion criteria overlap with actual participation in arms production, nor that entries are kept up to date.

The inclusion criteria are unknown. They are neither produced nor described. The person concerned cannot therefore demonstrate that he should not have appeared on it, and the Court cannot verify that the Council correctly construed the scope of the recording.

The assessment has been delegated. By adopting the Russian characterisation without verifying it, the Council has substituted for its own examination that of a foreign government, and moreover that of the State against which the measures are directed. The objection is not merely evidential, it is institutional.

A request to the Council for communication of the material underlying the listing is the first step to take. It is inexpensive and its yield is high: either the file contains something other than the register extract, and that must be argued over; or it contains nothing else, and the Kadi standard is not met.

Automatic attribution by office held

For the 743 natural persons, the statement of reasons alleges no personal conduct. It records a corporate office, then infers material support from it. That is a presumption drawn from status.

The General Court requires an individualised assessment. It has annulled listings founded on a mere family link with a person already listed, in Prigozhina and then in Ezubov, the Council having failed to establish what the person himself had done⁹. The reasoning applies a fortiori where the link relied on is an office held in a company whose own listing is itself devoid of any reasons of its own.

To that are added the questions of fact that the statement of reasons does not address: was the office held at the date of the listing, did the person have decision-making power over production, did the company carry on a civil activity. None of those verifications appears.

Proportionality

The freezing of assets and the prohibition on making funds available substantially interfere with the right to property and the freedom to conduct a business, which the Charter protects. Their justification presupposes a reasonable relationship between the measure and the objective pursued, which is to bear on Russian military capability.

Yet the selection criterion actually used, inclusion on a housing-subsidy register, says nothing about the nature, the volume or the destination of any production. The perimeter so defined is, by construction, over-inclusive. The plea has all the more force in that the scheme strikes, alongside the companies, 743 natural persons whose personal assets are frozen and who are banned from entering the territory of the Union.

The rights of the defence

A listed person has the right to obtain communication of the material relied on against him and to submit observations. The absence, in both acts, of any recital relating to communication, observations and review does not cause those guarantees to disappear, since they flow from the basic acts and from Articles 41 and 47 of the Charter. It nonetheless deserves to be noted, because it sheds light on the conditions in which the package was drawn up.

Those guarantees have a precise textual seat. Article 14(2) of Regulation No 269/2014 requires the Council to communicate its decision, including the grounds for listing, to the person concerned, either directly where the address is known or by publication of a notice, giving that person the opportunity to submit observations. Article 14(3) adds that, where observations are submitted or where substantial new evidence is presented, the Council is to review its decision and inform the person concerned. Article 14(4) subjects the list in Annex I to review at regular intervals and at least every twelve months.

Submitting observations is therefore not a matter of grace. It triggers an obligation of review whose non-performance is itself a ground of annulment, and it builds the file on which the General Court will assess, in due course, what the Council knew and what it overlooked.

Conduct of the action

Four procedural points are settled at the outset.

Modification of the application. Every act maintaining the listing is a new act and opens a time limit of its own. Article 86 of the Rules of Procedure of the General Court allows the application to be modified to take account of those acts, within the time limit applicable to each. Without modification, annulment of the initial listing would leave the maintaining acts standing and the action would lose its practical effect.

The plea of illegality. Article 277 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union allows the inapplicability of an act of general application to be invoked in support of an action directed against an individual act. After the judgment of 26 March 2026, its use against point (l) itself has little prospect. It retains its usefulness should the Council come to define the category by reference to an instrument of Russian law.

Interim measures. Articles 278 and 279 of the Treaty allow suspension of operation to be sought. Such measures are rarely granted in this field, urgency having to be established concretely and in figures, but they deserve consideration where the freeze jeopardises the continuation of a business.

The delisting request. Addressed to the Council, it triggers the review obligation in Article 14(3) of Regulation No 269/2014. It does not interrupt the time limit for bringing an action. The two routes are therefore pursued in parallel, and the first feeds the second.

VI. Identification, the time limit for bringing an action, and screening

Article 3(3) of Regulation No 269/2014 lists the information needed to identify the persons targeted, where available: for natural persons, surname and forenames including aliases, date and place of birth, nationality, passport and identity card numbers, sex, address if known, and function or occupation; for legal persons, the name, place and date of registration, registration number and place of business.

Comparing the two columns of the annex is instructive. The entities are identified with care: full address, website, corporate form, place and date of registration, OGRN registration number, INN tax identification number. The natural persons carry only the name, its rendering in Cyrillic characters, the function, the nationality, the sex and a tax identification number. No date of birth, no place of birth, no passport or identity card number, no address.

Two consequences follow, one for the persons listed, the other for European operators.

The starting point of the time limit

An action for annulment must be brought within the two-month time limit laid down in the sixth paragraph of Article 263 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union, extended by the ten-day extension on account of distance.

Article 14(2) of Regulation No 269/2014 itself sets out the alternative: direct communication where the address is known, publication of a notice failing that. The procedural rule follows.

The Court held in Gbagbo that the time limit runs, for each person listed, from the communication that must be made to that person, and that where the Council is unable to communicate directly, that communication takes the form of a notice published in the Official Journal, C series, the effects of which the person concerned cannot postpone by invoking later actual knowledge (paragraphs 59, 61 and 62). The Court there specified that the ten-day extension on account of distance, being a flat-rate period, applies including to applicants established in a third State (paragraph 63)¹⁰.

Since no address appears for any of the 743 persons listed on 12 October 2026, the starting point is, for all of them, publication of the notice, which took place in the Official Journal, C series, on 13 October 2026 under reference C/2026/5393¹¹. The two-month period, extended on account of distance, therefore runs to 23 December 2026.

One reservation must be entered. Article 59 of the Rules of Procedure of the General Court provides that where the time limit for bringing proceedings against a measure of an institution runs from the publication of that measure in the Official Journal, it is to be calculated from the end of the fourteenth day following that publication. Applied to the publication of the notice, that rule would move the deadline to 6 January 2027¹². Gbagbo does not settle the point, the Court having been seised only of the extension on account of distance. Prudence therefore requires 23 December 2026 to be taken as the operative date, and the admissibility of the action not to be made to depend on an unresolved question.

A time limit with no second chance

That time limit has recently acquired a significance it did not have. Practice in restrictive-measures litigation rested on an unstated assumption: a person who let the time limit lapse would find another opportunity a few months later, at the next renewal, since every act maintaining a listing opens a fresh time limit of its own. For the Ukraine regime, that assumption no longer holds.

In the version applicable until 15 September 2026, Article 6 of Decision 2014/145/CFSP fixed the Decision’s applicability by six-monthly terms, which obliged the Council to adopt a renewal decision twice a year. Council Decision (CFSP) 2026/2161 of 22 September 2026 replaced the second paragraph of that article with the following: ‘This Decision shall apply until 22 September 2029.’ Three weeks before the package, the Council thus moved from a six-month horizon to a three-year one¹³.

What remains, for the listings, is the obligation to review Annex I under Article 14(4) of Regulation No 269/2014, at regular intervals and at least every twelve months, together with the review triggered by observations or substantial new evidence.

The consequence should be stated plainly to anyone concerned. 23 December 2026 is not one of a series of equivalent deadlines: it is the only certain date. The next act that can be said with confidence to be open to challenge is the one the twelve-month review will produce.

The practical consequence deserves emphasis with every person concerned: a request for review addressed to the Council does not interrupt that time limit. The two routes are pursued in parallel.

Fourteen days to defend oneself before the Council

The same notice invites the persons and entities listed to send the Council a request for review accompanied by supporting documents, to the General Secretariat, unit RELEX.1, Rue de la Loi 175, Brussels. It fixes a deadline for that purpose: 27 October 2026.

Fourteen days. For 1,569 persons and entities, none of which received individual notification, since the Council holds no address, and which must therefore discover their listing by reading the Official Journal.

Fourteen days to identify counsel established in the Union, send them a file, assemble the documents establishing the actual activity of a Russian company or the effective functions of a director, have them translated where necessary, and draft useful observations.

Fourteen days, finally, when the person’s assets have been frozen since 12 October, so that payment of fees requires prior authorisation from the competent national authority under Article 4 of Regulation No 269/2014, whose processing ordinarily exceeds that period.

Article 14(2) of the regulation requires the Council to give the person concerned the opportunity to submit observations. The question arises whether an opportunity calibrated in that way remains effective. It does not condition the admissibility of the action, a request for review not being a mandatory preliminary. But it feeds the plea alleging infringement of the rights of the defence, and it illuminates the way this package was designed.

Acting for a listed person: what the instruments permit

Two questions arise before any other for counsel approached, and both are settled by the instruments themselves.

The first is the ban on legal advisory services. Article 5n(1)(a) of Regulation (EU) No 833/2014 prohibits the provision, directly or indirectly, of legal advisory services to the Russian government or to legal persons, entities or bodies established in Russia. Article 5n(5) and (6) nonetheless disapply that prohibition for services strictly necessary for the exercise of the rights of the defence in judicial proceedings and of the right to an effective legal remedy, and for services strictly necessary to ensure access to judicial, administrative or arbitral proceedings in a Member State. Representing a listed person before the General Court, and before the Council at the review stage, falls within those exceptions; general advice outside that framework does not. The dividing line turns on the purpose of the service, not on the identity of its recipient¹⁴.

The second is payment. The assets being frozen, Article 4(1)(b) of Regulation No 269/2014 allows the competent national authority to authorise the release of funds intended exclusively for the payment of reasonable professional fees or the reimbursement of expenses associated with the provision of legal services. In France that authorisation falls to the Directorate General of the Treasury. Regulation No 833/2014 contains a parallel derogation, in Article 5h, for transactions with the entities listed in its Annex XIV.

The Union has therefore organised, instrument by instrument, the listed person’s right to be defended. That is precisely what gives the deadline of 27 October its significance. An opportunity to submit observations, open for fourteen days to persons who have received no individual notification and whose counsel can be paid only under a prior authorisation that ordinarily takes longer than that to process, is not an effective opportunity. In practice, the Article 4 application must be filed on day one.

The notice finally recalls, and this is worth noting, that those concerned may challenge the Council’s decision before the General Court under the second paragraph of Article 275 and the fourth and sixth paragraphs of Article 263 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union. It is the Council itself that points the way.

Screening and the risk of error

Identifying 743 Russian nationals by transliterated surname alone, without a date of birth, imposes on European financial institutions and exporters a screening exercise exposed to homonymy. False positives paralyse lawful business relationships; false negatives expose the operator to prosecution.

Symmetrically, in a set of this size produced in a few weeks, material error is statistically certain: an office expired at the date of listing, homonymy, a company with a similar name, a struck-off entity. Such errors are corrected by a delisting request addressed to the Council, a faster route than an action, but one that does not dispense with bringing it.

VII. The obligation to declare assets, and the three timetables

A second notice, published the same day, reminds the same persons and entities of a distinct and rarely discussed obligation¹⁵.

Article 9(2) of Regulation No 269/2014 requires them to report, within six weeks of their listing, the funds and economic resources within the jurisdiction of a Member State belonging to, owned, held or controlled by them, to the competent authority of the Member State where those assets are located, and to cooperate in any verification of that information. For the listings of 12 October 2026, the deadline is 23 November 2026.

The same provision draws the consequence: failure to comply with those obligations is considered as circumvention of the measures on the freezing of funds and economic resources.

What this architecture produces must be measured. The listed person is subject to three simultaneous timetables: 27 October 2026 to submit observations to the Council, 23 November 2026 to declare assets to the national authorities, 23 December 2026 to bring proceedings before the General Court.

The second is the most formidable, for two reasons.

First, because non-compliance does not give rise to a mere administrative penalty. It is characterised as circumvention, and circumvention constitutes, in French law, the offence in Article L. 542-2 of the Customs Code, punishable by five years’ imprisonment. An omission thus becomes an offence, by the effect of a characterisation laid down in a Union regulation.

Second, because the declaration is required of the very person who is contesting the legality of his listing. He must disclose the extent of his assets to the administration of a Member State while arguing before the General Court that the measure freezing them is unlawful. The interaction between that reporting obligation and the privilege against self-incrimination arises sharply, and it is unresolved.

This is the point at which listing litigation and criminal defence cease to be two separate fields.

VIII. Criminal exposure for French operators

Since 12 October 2026, under Article 2 of Regulation (EU) No 269/2014, every operator established in the Union must freeze funds and economic resources belonging to, or held or controlled by, these 1,569 new persons and entities, and refrain from making funds or economic resources available to them or for their benefit, directly or indirectly. The freeze therefore reaches subsidiaries that are not designated by name, which multiplies the verification work.

The breach is not merely administrative. In French law, it is a criminal offence.

The applicable offence

Since the recodification of the Customs Code effected by Ordinance No 2026-265 of 8 April 2026, in force on 1 May 2026 with no change of substance, the offence appears in Article L. 542-2, which restates the former Article 459¹⁶. It covers the failure to comply with measures restricting economic and financial relations laid down by European Union law under Article 75 or Article 215 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union.

By reference to Article L. 542-1, the offence is punishable by five years’ imprisonment, confiscation, and a fine of between one and two times the amount involved. Legal persons incur five times the fine and professional disqualifications under Article L. 542-4, and the court may order the decision to be displayed and published under Article L. 543-1. Conduct before 1 May 2026 remains governed by the former Article 459, whose definition is unchanged.

A transposition still awaited

Directive (EU) 2024/1226 of 24 April 2024 harmonised the definition and the penalties for violations of restrictive measures¹⁷. It requires in particular a maximum of at least five years’ imprisonment for any violation concerning military equipment or dual-use goods, with no value threshold, whereas other violations presuppose a threshold of EUR 100,000. The transposition deadline expired on 20 May 2025. France has not met it and the Commission sent it a reasoned opinion on 4 June 2026.

That circumstance calls for two defence observations.

The prosecution cannot rely on the directive to extend Article L. 542-2 beyond its terms: a directive cannot, of itself and independently of a transposing law, determine or aggravate the criminal liability of a person, in accordance with Kolpinghuis Nijmegen¹⁸.

Criminalisation by reference does, by contrast, call for rigorous examination of the precision and foreseeability of the rule applicable at the date of the conduct, measure by measure. The argument has a limit, however, which the Court laid down in Rosneft: the principles of legal certainty and of the legality of penalties do not preclude a Member State from imposing criminal penalties for breach of a restrictive-measures regulation even before the Court has clarified its scope. Imprecision is not asserted, it is demonstrated.

The paradox

What the interaction of the two limbs produces must finally be measured. A listing may be annulled by the General Court for an insufficient factual basis, without that annulment erasing the offence committed by the third party who, while the listing was producing its effects, made funds available to the person targeted. The European operator therefore bears the criminal risk of a measure whose legality is not established.

Conclusion

The question raised by the package of 12 October 2026 is not that of the legality of the criterion. Since the judgment of 26 March 2026, a category criterion can be defended provided an objective link ties it to the objective pursued, and that link is here more direct than elsewhere. The question is that of proof of membership of the category, and the scale of the exercise has made it acute: listing 1,569 persons and entities in a single act presupposes a mechanical selection criterion, and the Council adopted one that was supplied to it by the administration of the State it means to sanction.

The Court’s review bears on the factual basis, not on the political expediency of the measure. In that respect, the reasons given leave open questions the Council will have to answer before the General Court: what are the criteria of the register relied on, who sets them, at what date, and what do they establish other than entitlement to a subsidy for employees’ housing. MegaFon and Abramovich show that the Council knows how to answer such questions when it has the material. Whether it has it here remains to be seen.

Experience of earlier regimes teaches that annulments do not occur on the central listings, those substantiated by solid material, but at the periphery, where the Council has proceeded by category. Prigozhina, Ezubov and Pumpyanskiy bear witness¹⁹. A package built entirely by category places that periphery at the centre.

For the defence, the sequence is simple and time is short. File the Article 4 release application at once, since its processing time governs everything else. Ask the Council for communication of the material underlying the listing. Verify the accuracy of the identifying particulars and of the corporate offices relied on. Submit observations establishing the actual activity of the entity and the effective functions of the person. Bring the action within the time limit, without waiting for the Council’s reply, then modify the application to take account of successive renewal acts.

For European businesses, the sequence is equally simple and no less urgent: review counterparty screening, trace ownership chains, and treat the question as what it has become in French law, that is to say a question of criminal exposure.

Notes

This analysis is published on zekkouti-avocat.com. A French version is also available: « Gel des avoirs russes : une possible contestation de la légalité de l’extension du 12 octobre 2026 devant le Tribunal de l’Union ». On asset-freeze and international sanctions litigation generally, see also Asset freezes and international sanctions and the earlier analysis “EU Asset Freezes and Sanctions: The Criminal File at the Heart of the Listing”.