The primary source of EU sanctions data in Castellum.AI is the EU Sanctions list. That list is compiled from the Financial Sanctions Files dataset, which is published by European Commission (EC, DG FISMA). However, uniquely amongst the global sanctions authorities, the consolidated database is not produced by the same body which mints new sanctions designations. This task falls to the European Council, which publishes new sanctions as part of the Official Journal of the European Union (OJEU) in text form. The EC then republishes them in their official database - after some delay.
This delay - sometimes as long as 21 days - has caused a major headache for financial institutions and regulated entities, who have to fear facilitating sanction-linked payments because their screening systems have not included updated data.
The only alternative is to manually track the publication of new sanctions designations in the OJEU. To do so, one has to track amendments to over 120 different EU regulations linked to “restrictive measures” (sanctions). That’s why we’ve created a special list source, called EU Sanctions - Official Journal list that includes new sanctions as soon as they’ve been published in the Journal.