Court keeps Belaz on Belarus sanctions list, rejects pleas

The Belarusian truck maker OAO Belaz-upravljajusaja kompanija holdinga Belaz Holding stays on the EU asset-freeze listsEuropa. The General Court dismissed its challenge to the Council acts that kept its name on the lists in 2024 and 2025EuropaEuropa, and ordered the company to pay the costs.

Belaz has been listed since June 2021. The Council's reasons have stayed unchanged since: Belaz is one of the leading state-owned companies in Belarus and one of the largest makers of large trucks and dump trucks in the world, a significant source of revenue for the Lukashenko regime, and its employees who joined strikes and peaceful protests after the August 2020 elections faced threats of dismissal and intimidation. The 2024 and 2025 maintaining acts renewed the listing on that same statement of reasons.

Belaz first argued that the listing criterion itself — persons, entities or bodies benefiting from or supporting the Lukashenko regime — is unlawful. The Court rejected both limbs of that pleaEuropa. Competence first: individual restrictive measures against named persons and entities rest on Article 215(2) TFEU, not Article 215(1), and the Council need only show an objective link between the listed category and the third country, not a strong close tie enabling the listed entity to influence the regime. Legal certainty second: the benefit-or-support wording, read with the aim of increasing pressure on the regime, targets a limited, objectively defined category — relations with the regime in the form of a derived benefit or support, in particular financial or material support — and the case law has fixed its contours, so the rules are clear, precise and foreseeable.

On the facts, the Court held the Council to its burden but allowed it to rely on the earlier evidence files where the context had not changed. State ownership, the government's pledges of support, the description of Belaz as a Belarusian brand and part of the national legacy, and the supervisory board still chaired by the Belarusian economy minister all stood unrebutted, and 2022 sales in Russia of USD 800 million showed continuing substantial activity. On revenue, the Court accepted that direct proof of distributions was unavailable — balance sheets have been inaccessible since 2021 — and treated the 2019 net profit of more than BYN 266 million, past tax, dividends and mandatory contributions, state-owned firms' 38% share of 2022 Belarusian budget revenue, and 2022–2023 sales and income figures as a sufficiently concrete, precise and consistent body of evidence that Belaz remained a significant source of revenue. Belaz put forward no specific evidence of a change in its situation.

The Court also rejected the fundamental-rights pleaEuropa. The freeze is provided for by law, serves the general interest of supporting democracy, the rule of law and human rights, and is proportionate: less restrictive alternatives are easier to circumvent, the measures are reviewed at least yearly and remain temporary and reversible, and the importance of the aim justifies even substantial negative consequences.

Legal basis: Case T-239/24, applying Article 4(1)(b) of Decision 2012/642/CFSP and Article 2(5) of Regulation (EC) No 765/2006.