Well not really, yes it's only illegal to import oil from Syria, but it's also illegal to:-
2. No funds or economic resources shall be made available, directly or indirectly, to or for the benefit of the natural or legal persons, entities or bodies listed in Annex II and IIa.
The annex contains several oil companies.
Been reading this some more and it's actually quite a weak Article (14) to rely on (not that I think EU law is relevant) hence why the Gibraltan Supreme Court held the hearings in secret.
Right, so no
funds or
economic resources shall be made available to the Syrian refinery? OK, so what are
funds and
economic resources? They are defined as follows:
"(j) ‘funds’ means financial assets and benefits of every kind, including but not limited to:
(i) cash, cheques, claims on money, drafts, money orders and other payment instruments;
(ii) deposits with financial institutions or other entities, balances on accounts, debts and debt obligations;
(iii) publicly- and privately-traded securities and debt instruments, including stocks and shares, certificates representing securities, bonds, notes, warrants, debentures and derivatives contracts;
(iv) interest, dividends or other income on or value accruing from or generated by assets;
(v) credit, right of set-off, guarantees, performance bonds or other financial commitments;
(vi) letters of credit, bills of lading, bills of sale;
(vii) documents evidencing an interest in funds or financial resources;
(f) ‘economic resources’ means assets of every kind, whether tangible or intangible, movable or immovable, which are not funds, but which may be used to obtain funds, goods or services;"
So the court would have to show that crude oil falls within the definition of
funds and
economic resources. Crude oil clearly can't be considered
funds so it has to fall within
economic resources. A bit of a stretch given that crude oil is already defined with the Regulations here:
(e) ‘crude oil and petroleum products’ means the products listed in Annex IV;
Given the separate definitions of
crude oil and petroleum products (which is what the Iranian ship was carrying) and
economic resources it's clear that they were considered two different things when drafting the Regulations.
If Article 14 was intended to be used to stop crude oil being sent to the Syrian refinery why didn't it say 'no
funds, economic resources or crude oil and petroleum products' shall be made available instead? Because that Article wasn't meant for that.
There's already an Article (6) that deals specifically with oil shipments from Syria and that would have been the obvious place to put it if intended, but it only prohibits imports from Syria.
Pretty weak legal argument for Gibraltar to make if that's what they are basing it on.
Anyway, this EU law nonsense is a distraction. As ubersonic has said the US commanded it (as the Spanish gov has said) and we foolishly carried out their orders.
Otherwise we are expected to believe that the UK unilaterally decides to enforce EU sanctions in a way that hasn't been done by any member state prior in the years the sanctions were active. If they could ignore it so could we...
And where are the pronouncements from the likes of the EU Commission and their foreign policy department saying this is how the sanctions were intended to operate? Again, they are very quiet.