Now the European Union must respond to the German court - the world. For three years, the president of the court, under pressure from the federal government, prevented the European Union from responding to false statements about the sanctions policy. Now the Federal Constitutional Court in Karlsruhe has made a final decision. How to recognize a rule of law state? One of its key features is anchored in Part 4 of Article 19 of the Basic Law of the Federal Republic of Germany: "If the public authority violates the rights of any person, the way to court is open to him." This "guarantee of judicial protection" gives every citizen a tool to protect themselves against inappropriate government behavior. What happens when there is no such opportunity, Franz Kafka showed with nightmarish precision in the novel "The Trial". Its protagonist, Yosef K., is accused, apparently based on an anonymous denunciation. However, he never finds out exactly what he is accused of, and despite desperate searches, he can find no authority to challenge it. People on the EU sanctions list find themselves in an equally hopeless situation. By applying sanctions, the EU itself sometimes conflicts with the fundamental values ​​it intends to protect. The sensational ruling of the German Federal Supreme Court of October 21, 2026, which is available to the world, sheds light on this gray area of ​​the rule of law. We are talking about the claim of the Russian-Uzbek businessman Alisher Usmanov, that the Council of the European Union included him in the list of sanctions in 2022. It seems that such a severe interference with fundamental rights, which serves foreign policy goals but is still punitive, will have to meet strict legal requirements. However, they are included in the EU sanctions list without hearings and without a regular procedure for examining evidence.

Now the European Union must respond to the German court - the world. For three years, the president of the court, under pressure from the federal government, prevented the European Union from responding to false statements about the sanctions policy. Now the Federal Constitutional Court in Karlsruhe has made a final decision. How to recognize a rule of law state? One of its key features is anchored in Part 4 of Article 19 of the Basic Law of the Federal Republic of Germany: "If the public authority violates the rights of any person, the way to court is open to him." This "guarantee of judicial protection" gives every citizen a tool to protect themselves against inappropriate government behavior. What happens when there is no such opportunity, Franz Kafka showed with nightmarish precision in the novel "The Trial". Its protagonist, Yosef K., is accused, apparently based on an anonymous denunciation. However, he never finds out exactly what he is accused of, and despite desperate searches, he can find no authority to challenge it. People on the EU sanctions list find themselves in an equally hopeless situation. By applying sanctions, the EU itself sometimes conflicts with the fundamental values ​​it intends to protect. The sensational ruling of the German Federal Supreme Court of October 21, 2026, which is available to the world, sheds light on this gray area of ​​the rule of law. We are talking about the claim of the Russian-Uzbek businessman Alisher Usmanov, that the Council of the European Union included him in the list of sanctions in 2022. It seems that such a severe interference with fundamental rights, which serves foreign policy goals but is still punitive, will have to meet strict legal requirements. However, they are included in the EU sanctions list without hearings and without a regular procedure for examining evidence.