Despite scores of Iranian individuals and companies successfully proving in European courts that the sanctions placed upon them are illegal under EU law, many remain listed, as the EU executive effectively overrides the decisions of its own courts.

Since the start of 2012, the European Union, once Iran’s biggest trading partner, has imposed stringent sanctions on entities involved in the Islamic Republic’s oil and banking sectors on the basis that they are supporters or financiers of nuclear proliferation. Sanctions mean that companies’ assets held in European banks are frozen; and travel bans are imposed on listed individuals.

The European Council, the EU's executive branch, regularly provides insufficient evidence to justify its claims that sanctioned entities are in fact involved in proliferation, which has left it exposed to the legal annulment of its sanctions.

After several long and expensive legal battles, many sanctions on Iranian banks, shipping companies, insurers, oil contractors, engineering firms and universities have been declared by EU judges to have been placed in “manifest error.”