This chapter has reviewed some of the cases brought before the CFI (ECJ) by individuals and entities seeking judicial review of EU counter-terrorism sanctions, implementing Security Council Resolution 1267 (1999) (and its successor instruments) and Security Council Resolution 1373 (2001). In the first judgments handed down in these cases, the CFI pays (probably) excessive deference to a monist vision of the relationship between the United Nations order and the EU law, postulating an undisputable supremacy of Security Council resolutions adopted under Chapter VII over the EU legal order. The Court thus declines to review the lawfulness not only of Security Council’s counter-terrorism sanctions but also of the implementing acts adopted by the European Council under the EC Treaty. The CFI position is not in line with the current picture of the EU system, where as a result of a long work of judicial construction, the protection of fundamental human rights is well entrenched in the EU Treaty.

It is not clear at this stage whether the ECJ may be ready to uphold the more encouraging OMPI judgment in future cases arising from the 1267 Sanctions regime. The OMPI Case may not, then, constitute the charting of a new direction, nor would it provide an answer to the general question of the designation of individuals and entities as ‘terrorists’.^[167] The CFI’s acceptance of a serious lacuna in the EU human rights framework is all the more worrying if one considers the lack of alternative avenues of redress open to individuals affected by counter-terrorism measures. Not only must one exclude any significant role for domestic judges when dealing with judicial review of EC measures (with the possible exception of preliminary ruling procedures, which would anyway bring the ball back to the ECJ’s court),^[168] but also the ECrtHR, in the recent Bosphorus judgment,^[169] appears inclined to exercise judicial review only when fundamental human rights are not otherwise protected in a manner that is equivalent to the protection afforded by the ECHR. However, this outcome is difficult to reconcile with the established case law of the ECrtHR, according to which ‘the Convention is intended to guarantee not rights that are theoretical or illusory but rights that are practical and effective’.^[170]