EU court refuses NITC interim relief

The General Court has rejected the National Iranian Tanker Company’s application for interim relief to suspend the operation of its re-listing on the EU’s Iranian sanctions pending the outcome of its application to annul its re-listing. Link to the judgment here – Case T-207/15 R National Iranian Tanker Company v Council.

NITC won its 1^st EU annulment case in July 2014 (see previous blog), then was re-listed in February 2015 and made a 2^nd application to annul that re-listing, on the grounds that (inter alia) it was an abuse of process to re-list it on the basis of the same facts as its original listing, which the Council had simply re-labelled. The General Court accepted that there is a prima facie case for the Council to answer, but held that the balance of the parties’ interests favoured the Council and interim relief was not necessary to prevent “serious and irreparable harm” given the possibility of financial compensation.  The EU Court has never granted interim measures in a sanctions case to date. Maya Lester acts for the NITC.