A top European court has struck down restrictions imposed by the European Union against the Central Bank of Iran (CBI) on an alleged charge of circumventing US-led sanctions against the Islamic Republic. The Luxembourg-based EU’s Court of Justice said it “annuls…the EU March 23, 2012 [ruling] concerning restrictive measures against Iran in so far as it listed Central Bank of Iran.” “The reasons relied on are so vague and lacking in detail that the only possible response was in the form of a general denial,” the court ruled on Thursday, adding that “those reasons therefore do not comply with the requirements of the case-law.”
At the beginning of 2012, the US and EU imposed sanctions on Iran’s oil and financial sectors with the goal of preventing other countries from purchasing Iranian oil and conducting transactions with the Central Bank of Iran.
On October 15, 2012, the EU foreign ministers reached an agreement on another round of sanctions against the Iranian central bank accusing it of involvement in nuclear technologies propagation.
The Court of Justice sated the charge against the Central Bank of Iran is “insufficient in the sense that it does not enable either the applicant or the Court to understand the circumstances which led the [European] Council to consider…to adopt the contested act.”
The General Court of the European Union located in Luxemburg decided that the inclusion of the Central Bank of Iran on the EU’s sanctions (restrictive measures) relating to Iran in March 2012 was unlawful. The Bank was at that time listed on the grounds of “involvement in activities to circumvent sanctions”.