The seminar departs from the long-standing puzzle why sanctions are evermore applied if they are only moderately effective at best. To elucidate this puzzle, the talk argues that the rationale for sanction imposition in the eyes of a sanction sender is composed of a broader range of goals, which exceeds the widespread limited understanding of effectiveness in the sense of target compliance. The project opens the “black box” of EU sanctions through an inter-institutional perspective which analyzes how the European Parliament contests EU sanction governance. By contributing a discursive-interpretivist approach to the study of sanctions and their potency as an instrument of global governance, the talk brings scholarship on sanction effectiveness, international norms, and contestation into conversation.