持有资产和欧盟资产冻结——信托法院

The Court of Justice on trusts 26 May 2026 Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 led the EU to expand its sanctions list underCouncil Regulation (EU) No 269/2014, freezing the funds and economic resources of every Several of those individuals had, in advance of being listed,placed valuable assets into trusts. The question this opened,and on which the courts had until recently said little, waswhether the freeze reaches assets held in a trust where thetrust deed formally excludes the sanctioned individual fromany right to use or benefit from those assets. On 21 May2026, the Court of Justice of the EU answered the questionacross three judgments delivered on the same day. In CaseC-483/23 (T Trust), the First Chamber addressed the position This separation between the title to property and theenjoyment of it is the defining feature of the trust. The sameseparation makes the trust an effective device for severing, The three references arose from variants of the samepattern. InT Trust, the sanctioned person was the settlor.Four Italian operating companies were wholly owned by aparent company seated in Bermuda. The shares of the parentcompany had been placed in an irrevocable trust governedby the law of Bermuda, administered by a Swiss professionaltrustee, and supervised by a protector. By deed of 7 February2022, the settlor was excluded from any future benefit underthe trust. Three weeks later, the council added him to the EU sanctions list under Council Decision (CFSP) 2022/337and Council Implementing Regulation (EU) 2022/336. On16 March 2022, the Italian Financial Security Committee(Comitato di Sicurezza Finanziaria) froze the shares of the Background The regulation’s Article 2(1) freezes all funds and economicresources belonging to, owned, held or controlled by theindividuals listed in Annex I, together with the assets of anyassociated persons. Two further provisions sit alongside it:Article 2(2) prohibits making funds or economic resourcesavailable, directly or indirectly, to a listed individual; and In both, the trust deeds prohibited any enjoyment or disposalby the sanctioned individual during the period of sanctions;the Italian authorities nevertheless froze the company Analysis The court started from the principle that the words used inArticle 2(1), namely belonging, ownership, holding and control,are terms of EU law that must carry a single, uniform meaningacross the EU, the regulation containing no definition of themand no instruction to look to national law. The court notedthat the language versions of the provision diverge. Settled The surrounding facts have to be assessed in the round,including the timing of the substitution against the timing of On that basis, the court read the two key terms, belongingand control, broadly. Belonging covers situations in whicha person holds power over the assets in fact, even wheresomeone else holds legal title; control covers every situationin which a person is able to influence the choices of another,even where no legal, proprietary or capital link runs betweenthem. Applied to the trust, this means that the trustee’s legalownership does not prevent the assets from being treatedas belonging to or controlled by the sanctioned settlor. The The settlor-side and beneficiary-side tests are two faces of asingle working doctrine on Article 2(1). The decisive question,across both, is whether the sanctioned person retains anyone of the four operative powers (use, benefit, disposal orinfluence). The court grounded the construction in the internalcoherence of the freezing regime as a whole, taking Articles1, 2(1), 2(2) and 9 of the regulation as a single system. To readArticle 2(1) more narrowly would deprive the broad definitions In assessing whether the requisite power has, in fact, beenretained, the national court must look to the law that governsthe trust but must not stop there. Where, as in bothT Trust andFZ AR, the trust is governed by the law of Bermuda, the court may take account of any powers that Bermudian trustlaw permits the settlor or beneficiary to keep in reserve,whether or not those powers are written into the deed.The assessment must extend to the surrounding facts:the relationships between the sanctioned individual and The court’s beneficiary-side test is the analytical mirror ofthe settlor-side test. Assets settled into a trust of whicha sanctioned individual is the beneficiary are frozen evenwhere the trust deed prohibits the beneficiary from enjoyingor disposing of those assets during the period of sanctions, The position of intra-family transfers, made acute by thebeneficiary-side cases, warrants particular attention. Thecourt did not establish any presumption that a transfer ofbeneficial rights to a spouse or relative shortly before or aftera sanction is an act of evasion. Operators should be alert to Comparison The position adopted in the companion judgments convergeswith the approach of the principal parallel regimes. In th