Please tell us about yourself and your research within the EUI Max Weber Programme (MWP).
I am a Ukrainian academic and a Senior Lecturer at the Kyiv-Mohyla Academy, where I have been teaching one course on diplomatic law and one on sanctions. Since September 2022, I have been a fellow within the Max Weber Programme of the European University Institute, where I have been affiliated to the EUI Law Department. At the EUI, I have been working on two research fields: the prohibition of political parties and international sanctions.
You took part in two workshops on sanctions in Brussels and Geneva in June. Please tell us the work you presented at those events.
On 4 June 2024, I held a workshop at the European Parliament (EP) on sanctions. I engaged in a discussion on current trends in sanctions design and policy, presenting to the audience my theoretical framework to classify sanctions. I introduce the concept of a sanctions à la carte approach, detailing five distinct Objective Regimes (ORs) for implementing international sanctions: crime-based sanctions substitute for criminal proceedings by addressing criminal behaviour abroad; value-based sanctions focus on human rights and democracy protection; unfriendly sanctions serve foreign policy by responding to unfriendly acts; countermeasures address international wrongful acts; and war sanctions target aggression, such as sanctions against Russia. This framework provides a flexible and targeted method for applying sanctions based on specific objectives. The Brussels event took place within the EUI-EP Partnership and the EP Directorate-General for External Policies of the Union (DG EXPO) Electoral Break Training. The workshop was also supported by the EUI Widening Europe Programme.
On 6 June 2024, I also participated in a workshop at the Geneva International Sanctions Network, with Coordinator at the Geneva International Sanctions Network (GISN) Erica Moret and Professor Honoraire at IHEID, Thomas Biersteker. Together, we discussed the five ORs for understanding sanctions, distinguishing between crime-based and value-based sanctions. These topics will be further explored in my upcoming paper 'Beyond a single purpose: the complex reasons behind international sanctions.'
You are the founder of the online platform ‘Sanctions Finder’, and you contribute to the ‘Project Expedite Justice’ in Ukraine. Please tell us about these initiatives.
Sanctions Finder is an online platform I created that allows to monitor all sanctions programmes imposed by the US, UK, and the EU in a single place. It is unique as it provides simultaneous access to all sanctions, including those imposed on individuals or companies, as well as sectoral economic restrictions. No other data aggregator offers a comprehensive view of all sectoral programmes. I am further developing this platform to allow a wider audience to use the data on sanctions on a free-of-charge basis. The platform also constitutes an important information source for my research, as many studies on sanctions lack access to all sanctions programmes.
Project Expedite Justice documents war crimes and crimes against humanity committed by Russia in the war against Ukraine, focusing particularly on the crimes related to the pillage of agricultural products. In March 2022, I supported in launching the project in Ukraine and I am regularly consulted by the project team on how to qualify war crimes with evidence available from open sources and victims' testimonies. This is critically important as Russia continues to weaponise food, destabilising many countries facing hunger.
During the first year of your MWP fellowship, you published an article on the banning of political parties. Could you briefly summarise its main argument?
As I mentioned earlier, the other research field I have been working on is the prohibition of political parties. My paper ‘Why and when democracies ban political parties: a classification of democratic orientations to party bans’ offers a new paradigm explaining why and when democracies ban political parties. The functioning of political parties is fundamental to healthy and pluralistic democracies. Thus, the exclusion of parties from the political process raises a severe dilemma for a democratic society, which must address why and when a political competitor can legitimately be kicked out of the political arena. The approaches of various national courts in cases concerning the prohibition of political parties are far from uniform. While democracy is a universal value for a pan-European context, courts from various countries set different limits of democratic tolerance for guarding it.
In brief, the classification of democratic state orientation to party bans consists of liberal, institutional, and militant models, which illustrates different concepts on finding a balance between personal rights on the one hand and the interests of a democratic society on the other. This paper is invaluable for practitioners and scholars to understand how not all democracies set the same standards of democratic tolerance and how to measure it for proper assessment.
What are your plans for the rest of your fellowship at the MWP? And what do you believe is the added value of being an EUI Max Weber Fellow?
I have finished my second-year Max Weber Fellowship with the submission of the paper ‘Beyond a single purpose: the complex reasons behind international sanctions’. I am developing a complex research agenda for the next phase of my research fellowship, focusing on the topic of ‘Transforming international sanctions: mapping their delivery and enforcement’. In the next step of my research endeavours, I aim to explore how the notion of international sanctions is shifting from the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) agenda towards the G7.
I believe that the EUI Max Weber Programme has provided me with great flexibility for doing research and with perfect conditions to pursue an independent research agenda. The programme has also strengthened my interdisciplinary approach, and, most importantly, it has given me numerous opportunities to disseminate my research findings.
The Max Weber Programme (MWP) is the largest international postdoctoral programme in the social sciences and humanities in Europe. It fosters multidisciplinary research collaboration across departments and between established and early career researchers within the EUI.