In a Nutshell

In December 2025, the EU Council placed Swiss military analyst and former UN/NATO official Jacques Baud on a sanctions list intended to counter Russian “information manipulation and interference.” Baud, a long-time Brussels resident, now faces frozen assets, a travel ban, and an effective inability to return to Switzerland. A recent opinion by former CJEU judge Ninon Colneric and international-law scholar Alina Miron concluded that the sanctions regime as applied is incompatible with the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights and the ECHR. This piece from Verfassungsblog argues that the EU is drifting from minimum rule-of-law standards by using restrictive measures against journalists, analysts, and publicists.

Our Take

The Baud case is a textbook illustration of institutional mission drift. Sanctions frameworks designed to target the economic lifelines of autocratic leaders are now being used to penalise individual expression, even when the views in question are, as the article acknowledges, at least partly accurate in substance. Whether or not one agrees with Baud’s analysis of the Ukraine war, the means by which the EU has chosen to respond to it, freezing assets and banning travel for expressing dissenting views, undermines the very liberal order the Union claims to defend.

The episode should concern anyone who values procedural safeguards. When the EU sanctions a person for saying things the Union dislikes, it does not just harm that individual; it signals to all potential dissenting voices that the price of engagement with EU public debate may be personal ruin. Perhaps more importantly, however, it also constitutes a formidable threat to the very people holding the power today. They, too, could be targeted tomorrow with a different majority. This is a strategic vulnerability.

Read the full story at Verfassungsblog.