In the latest sign of the legal troubles facing the European Union’s designation regime — the authority under which governments can freeze funds and economic resources of illicit actors — the EU General Court is expected to annul the terrorist designation of Hamas on December 17. The judgment comes on the heels of a similar action in October that annulled the Council of the European Union’s designation of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) on similarly procedural grounds. Although the new judgment is not expected to acquit Hamas of charges related to violence, it comes at a time when the group’s terrorist and militant activities are on the rise. And like the LTTE, Hamas will surely point to the judgment as “evidence” that it is not a terrorist entity.

BACKGROUND

On September 12, 2010, Hamas appealed its designation as a terrorist entity under the EU’s Common Position 931. In 2002, the EU had banned the group’s military “wing,” the Izz a-Din al-Qassam Brigades, but not its social or political branches. Yet in September 2003, following a series of Hamas suicide bombings during the second intifada, the EU expanded the listing to include the entire group, though several European countries agreed to the action only skeptically.

Several years passed before the first of several Hamas-related appeals made its way before the General Court. The first, Case T-400/10, is the case at hand today. Two others involved the designation of the al-Aqsa Foundation — a Hamas-linked charity — and were dismissed by the court (cases C-539/10 P and C-550/10 P). Another amounted to a second Hamas appeal of its designation (T-531/11) and was therefore “dismissed as manifestly inadmissible” since it duplicated the preexisting case; in June 2012, Hamas was ordered to bear its own costs and to pay those of the Council of the EU as well.

Read the article in full at the Washington Institute.