The EU court has denied the Russian sailing ship's request to lift sanctions.

The captain and owner of the sailing vessel "Shtandart" attempted to challenge EU sanctions to gain entry to European ports, but were denied. Several cases of vessels being denied entry to EU ports were reported last year.

The General COURT of the European Union has refused to accept the claim filed by the captain and owner of the sailing frigate Shtandart (a replica of a historic frigate from the time of Peter the Great, built in 1999) to effectively lift EU sanctions on the ship. The decision is published in the Official Journal of the EU.

The refusal is explained partly by the fact that the court considered itself unauthorized to consider this issue, and partly by the fact that the application, by its very nature, cannot be accepted for consideration.

The Shtandart has been located in EU territorial waters for the past few years, having been denied official registration in RUSSIA. Currently sailing under the Cook Islands flag, its last known location was the port of La Rochelle in southwestern France, according to Marine Traffic data.

Lawyers representing the sailing ship sought to overturn an EU decision under the 14th sanctions package (adopted in June 2024), which modified the ban on Russian vessels entering European ports and gateways, specifying that it applies to "replicas of historic ships." The frigate's lawyers argued that this was effectively an individual decision banning a specific vessel from entering EU ports, as there are no other similar wooden replicas of historic ships in European waters. If this were true, the EU Court of Justice would have jurisdiction to hear the dispute.

In response, the EU Council argued that the term "replicas of historic ships" encompassed a category of vessels. In this case, the EU Court of Justice lacked jurisdiction to hear the dispute (it is not entitled to question EU Council decisions in the area of ​​general foreign policy and security). Furthermore, the EU Council asserted that the modification of the definition of "vessel" for the purposes of applying the port entry ban merely clarified that the sanctions covered replicas of historic ships, rather than expanding their scope (meaning that even without this modification, the ban would still apply to replicas of historic ships). The EU Court of Justice upheld these arguments and dismissed the complaint, ordering the owners of the sailing ship (the non-profit organization "Project Standard") to pay the legal costs.

RBC sent a request to the Project Standart office and asked captains Dmitry Ryabchikov and Vladimir Martus for comment.

Last year, the Shtandart encountered problems entering French and Spanish ports due to pro-Ukrainian activists from AGA Ukraina, who pointed out that the ship had changed its flag from Russia to the Cook Islands. They called this "fraud" and "an attempt to evade sanctions." Authorities also cited restrictions imposed on the sailing ship when denying it entry.

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