French Finance Minister Bruno Le Maire said on Friday that the European Union will look into reviving “blocking regulations” that were originally created in 1996 to protect European companies doing business with Libya and Cuba from US sanctions. They were an effective tactic at the time: They actually convinced Washington to back down from imposing sanctions. [...]
Le Maire also said Europe is also looking to achieve “financial independence” from the US in response to the sanctions. According to the Guardian, one proposition for executing that would be creating “a purely European finance house to oversee euro-denominated transactions with Iran.” The basic idea is that Europe could create financial institutions that are immune to US sanctions because they don’t deal in US dollars or link up with the US financial system. [...]
Ilan Goldenberg, a Middle East expert at the Center for a New American Security and former senior Pentagon official, told me he’s skeptical that European banks and businesses will want to risk being hit by US sanctions since the effectiveness of any future European blocking regulations is unclear.
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