Sanctions in the UK Overseas Territories after Brexit

Under the framework established by the UK Sanctions and Anti-Money Laundering Act 2018 (SAMLA) existing EU sanctions and restrictive measures will transition into UK domestic law and EU measures will no longer have any effect or applicability from the end of the year.

In the UK Overseas Territories (UKOTs): EU measures will also no longer apply in the British Virgin Islands, the Cayman Islands, Anguilla, Bermuda (among others) from 11pm UK time (8pm Bermuda, 7pm BVI/Anguilla and 6pm Cayman) on 31 December 2020.

As a slight caveat to the above: under the pre-Brexit regime while EU Regulations are not directly applicable in the UK Overseas Territories, the EU’s Common Security and Foreign Policy (CSFP) does in effect apply as the UK is required to implement Orders in Council to reflect the CSFP in the UKOTs.

Further thoughts

While the above outlines the process for sanctions implementation moving forward, the more practical – and interesting – observation is that owing to the break that Brexit represents, UK/UKOT and EU sanctions compliance measures will start to vary over time. In fact, this is not just something for the future – we are already seeing this in practice, as was the case in the divergence between UK and EU positions in implementation of sanctions over Belarus, which we commented on last week.

A copy of the SAMLA can be found here.

A copy of our recent blog post on Belarus sanctions is here.