The twelfth package and the diamond question

Through the autumn of 2023 the European Union prepared a further sanctions package, adopted before the end of the year. Its content is instructive because of what had been left until twelfth.

Diamonds

russian diamonds had gone untouched through eleven previous packages, for a straightforward reason: a diamond is small, valuable, easily moved, and loses its origin the moment it is cut. A ban that cannot be verified is a ban that redirects trade rather than stopping it.

The solution required a traceability scheme agreed among the G7 — certification at import, so origin travels with the stone. That is why it took so long. Not reluctance, but the need to build a verification mechanism before the prohibition could mean anything.

The pattern this reveals

The easy measures came first and the hard ones later, and the difficulty is almost always verification rather than will. Anything that can be relabelled at a border needs an infrastructure of proof before a prohibition works.

The other half of the package

Further anti-circumvention provisions, more listed individuals and entities, tightening of the oil price cap arrangements, and export bans on additional industrial goods with battlefield applications.

My reading

Twelve packages in under two years, agreed by twenty-seven governments each time, unanimously. Whatever criticisms are fair about pace and gaps, that record of sustained collective decision-making has few precedents.