This time last year, the European Union set up a regime for freezing the assets of people who had undermined the rule of law, deprived citizens of their rights or 'obstructed an inclusive political solution' in the Maldive Islands. It has now revoked it, never having sanctioned a single person.

The regime was also designed to apply to corporations, trusts and other businesses and legal arrangements, but did not do so. The EU set it up when the political situation in the Maldives deteriorated in the first half of 2018, believing that various people were preventing institutions such as Parliament and the judiciary from functioning in the way that it liked. In February of that year one of its councils claimed that the situation was "not in accordance with the principles of democratic rule and separation of powers," indicating that it might consider "targeted restrictive measures" (a vague phrase that included travel bans and asset freezing) if the situation did not improve. The holding of peaceful and, in the EU's eyes at least, democratic parliamentary elections on 6 April this year eased the situation.

No such EU regime applies to China, which is presently endangering Hong Kong's status as an international financial hub by cracking down on human rights in its attempts to subvert the Sino–British Joint Declaration. This 20th-century bilateral treaty guarantees, at least on paper, the human rights of Hong Kongers by imposing the "one country, two systems" policy that came into force when China took over the former British colony in 1997. The agreement is supposed to remain in place in every detail for 50 years until 2047. It therefore seems likely that the EU will only apply such impromptu sanction regimes as the Maldives initiative to very small jurisdictions.