The EU General Court on Nov. 29 accepted the second application from Alexander Pumpyanskiy, son of Russian oligarch Dmitry Pumpyanskiy, to annul his sanctions relisting, according to an unofficial translation. The court rejected his claim for damages. Pumpyanskiy was sanctioned in March 2022 after Russia's invasion of Ukraine, because of his relationship to Dmitry Pumpyanskiy, and because he was president and board member of the Sinara Group.

The U.K. amended one entry under its Russia sanctions regime and five entries under its Libya sanctions regime in a pair of Nov. 30 notices from the Office of Financial Sanctions Implementation. The listing for Mihajlo Perencevic under the Russia restrictions was altered to reflect that he is the former, not current, president of construction, energy and extractive firm Velesstroy. Under the Libya restrictions list, OFSI amended the entries for Osama Al Kuni Ibrahim, Abd Al-Rahman Salim Ibrahim Al-Milad, Mohammed Al Amin Al-Arabi Kashlaf, Saadi Qadhafi and Sayyid Mohammed Qadhafi.

The European Commission on Dec. 1 sent the European Council the deal it reached with Japan on cross-border data flows to be included in the EU-Japan Economic Partnership Agreement. If the council authorizes it, the amendment to the EPA will be sent to the European Parliament for consent, after which it would take effect, the commission announced.

The EU General Court on Nov. 29 rejected Russian oligarch German Khan's challenge to his sanctions listing, according to an unofficial translation. The listing criteria had a proper legal basis and were not disproportional, the court said.

The European Council on Nov. 29 passed a negotiating mandate for the council president to start talks with the European Parliament on new rules for the "import, export and transit of firearms into and from the EU," the council announced. The mandate says the rules must look to close the loopholes for firearm trafficking while easing trade of firearms for "legitimate purposes."

The French government didn't pressure the European Commission to launch the countervailing duty investigation on electric vehicle batteries from China announced in October (see 2310040012), said Martin Lukas, who heads the commission's trade defense directorate. Lukas, speaking on the commission’s Trade-Off podcast released Nov. 28, said the commission had been studying China’s increasing share of the EU’s EV battery market and said the investigation wasn’t brought because of urging from any single EU member state, despite some media reports.

The European Commission on Nov. 28 imposed provisional antidumping duties on polyethylene terephthalate (PET) plastic product imports from China. The duties will range from 6.6% to 24.2%, and companies not given a specific rate will face the 24.2% dumping rate, the commission announced. It said the duties stem from an EU investigation provisionally finding that Chinese imports present "a threat of a clearly foreseeable and imminent injury to EU industry."

The U.K. last week renewed a Russia-related general license that authorizes certain transactions tied to payments that have been processed by a sanctioned credit or financial institution at some point in the payment chain. The license applies when the sanctioned party acted as an original, correspondent or intermediary institution where the recipient institution and the institution that sent the payment are not designated parties, among other conditions. The license, which was scheduled to expire Dec. 1 (see 2310020016), now lasts through Dec. 14.

The European Parliament voted last week to reject a proposed sustainable pesticides regulation that could set new limits on imported agricultural goods and food products, along with other pesticide-related bans (see 2310260029). Parliament said 299 members voted against the proposal, 207 supported it and 121 abstained. “With this vote, Parliament has effectively rejected the Commission proposal and closed its first reading,” the legislative body said in a news release. It added that the European Council must still decide “on its own position on the proposal to determine whether it is definitively rejected or returns to Parliament for a second reading.”

The EU this week put in place humanitarian exemptions for 10 of its sanctions regimes to authorize certain transactions related to aid and “basic human needs,” the European Council said. The exemptions, which implement the U.N. Security Council’s humanitarian carve-out that the body approved last year (see 2212120054), cover EU’s sanctions regime for cyberattacks as well as its regimes for Bosnia and Herzegovina, Burundi, Guinea, Lebanon, Myanmar, Nicaragua, Tunisia, Venezuela and Zimbabwe.