The EU Restrictive Measures – What if the Court of Justice of European Union finds them not Being Legal: Cases in Croatia and Republic of Macedonia

The European Union’s restrictive measures or sanctions may be provided against one or more countries, international organizations, natural or legal persons (such as terrorists and terrorist group). In practice most used restrictive measures are the financial restrictions as asset freeze on of individuals or companies, assets bans and travel bans on individuals. But the ultimate objective of a sanction is determined in accordance with the individual situation or situation. The restrictive measures (Article 215 of Treaty of the Functioning of the European Union (TFEU)) are part of Common Foreign and Security Policy (CFSP) and judicial review is available under Article 275 TFEU, which prescribes that the Court has jurisdiction in reviewing the legality of decisions providing for restrictive measures against natural or legal persons adopted by the Council on the basis of Chapter 2 of Title V of the Treaty on European Union. This paper will analyse the legal aspects of restrictive measures and the legal nature of the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) jurisdiction in this field. Second part of the paper will analyse how the European Union (EU) imposes sanctions and embargos among the member states (example Croatia) and how these measures impose to the non -State countries (example R. Macedonia)