EU sanctions: the Official Journal and the consolidated list

European Union sanctions are adopted by the Council and take legal effect when published in the Official Journal of the European Union. The Commission then republishes the designated persons and entities in its consolidated financial sanctions list. We hold both, along with the other EU registers that carry restrictive measures.

Two official sources, two purposes

The Official Journal is the legal record: each Council decision and implementing regulation that adds, amends or removes a listing is published there, and the listing applies from that publication. The consolidated financial sanctions list is the Commission's machine-readable compilation of the people and entities subject to an asset freeze, built for screening.

The two can differ:

Timing. A designation applies from its publication in the Official Journal; the consolidated list is updated afterwards. Screening against the consolidated list alone can miss a listing for the days in between.
Scope. The consolidated list covers financial sanctions (asset freezes). Other restrictive measures, such as vessel port-access bans, travel bans, and some export and service restrictions, are published in the Official Journal and in separate lists.

To be provided: whether we measure the delay between Official Journal publication and the consolidated list, and our figures if we do. We publish no figure until it is measured.

EU registers we hold

Register	Type	Refreshed	Records	Last run
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The table also shows EU registers of other kinds (for example the European Parliament's members, used as PEP data, and the EU's exclusion system for procurement).

Under review: two registers in this table, the consolidated financial sanctions list and “EU FSD”, currently hold the same number of records and are likely the same list loaded twice. Until one is retired, the sanctions record count includes both.

How an EU listing is recorded

Each EU listing becomes a record (person, company, vessel and so on) and a Sanction entity holding:

authority: the register it came from;
program: the regime or legal basis, as the publisher gives it;
sourceUrl and listingDate, where the register provides them.

We do not yet record the measure type, annex or entry number, or the stated reasons for listing as separate fields. See FollowTheMoney JSON.

One party, several EU registers

The same person often appears in the Official Journal register, the consolidated list and the travel-ban list. Each appearance is its own record; where we have matched them, they share a canonical_id, and screening returns each matching record with its register so you can see every list that names the party. See identifiers and deduplication.

Screening against EU sanctions

Use the sanctions collection: it holds every EU register above together with the sanctions registers of other authorities. There is no separate EU-only collection; to restrict results to EU registers, filter on the register (datasets in the bulk files, source in API results).

curl -X POST "https://api.crownintelligence.net/api/match/sanctions" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{"queries":{"q1":{"schema":"Person","properties":{"name":["Jane Example"],"birthDate":["1970"]}}}}'

How quickly listings reach us

Each EU register is collected on its own schedule, shown in the “Refreshed” column above, and the screening index is reprocessed after collection. We make no promise of faster updates than those schedules.

To be provided: how we read the Official Journal (source, polling method), how amending acts and removals are applied, and whether any step involves human review.

Last updated 2026-10-03