EU Council maintains Guatemala sanctions and sets 20 October deadline

The Council of the European Union has notified five people subject to EU sanctions over the situation in Guatemala that it intends to maintain the restrictive measures against them, with amended statements of reasons and on the basis of new evidence. The notice was published in the Official Journal of the European Union, C series, on 14 October 2026 under reference C/2026/5407. Those concerned have until 20 October 2026 to ask the Council for the intended statements of reasons or the evidence supporting the decision.

The five are listed in the Annex to Council Decision (CFSP) 2024/254 and in Annex I to Council Regulation (EU) 2024/287, the two instruments that carry the EU’s restrictive measures in view of the situation in Guatemala, both published in the Official Journal on 15 January 2024. The notice is a procedural step rather than a new sanction: it announces the Council’s intention to keep the designations in place while updating the reasons and the evidence behind them, and it opens the window in which the persons concerned can obtain that material.

The five persons notified

The information is addressed to the persons appearing in the annexes of the two 2024 instruments, identified by their number on the list:

• María Consuelo PORRAS ARGUETA DE PORRES (No. 1)
• Ángel Arnoldo PINEDA ÁVILA (No. 2)
• José Rafael CURRUCHICHE CUCUL (No. 3)
• Leonor Eugenia MORALES LAZO DE SÁNCHEZ (No. 4)
• Fredy Raúl ORELLANA LETONA (No. 5)

What the Council intends to do

The Council states that it envisages maintaining the restrictive measures against the five with amended statements of reasons and on the basis of new evidence. The notice does not reproduce the content of those amended reasons or of the new evidence; it only informs the persons concerned that they may request them from the Council.

The legal basis of the measures themselves is unchanged: Council Decision (CFSP) 2024/254 and Council Regulation (EU) 2024/287, cited in the notice with their Official Journal references of 15 January 2024. The document therefore concerns the maintenance and restatement of existing listings, not the adoption of a new sanctions regime.

Deadline and how to respond

Requests must reach the Council before 20 October 2026, six days after publication of the notice, at the following address:

• Council of the European Union, General Secretariat, RELEX.1
• Rue de la Loi/Wetstraat 175, 1048 Bruxelles/Brussel, Belgium
• Email: sanctions@consilium.europa.eu

The notice appears in the C series of the Official Journal, which carries information and notices rather than legislation; the acts it refers to were published in the L series.

For readers, the notice matters because it fixes a hard and unusually short deadline. The right to obtain the reasons and the evidence is the practical route for a listed person to challenge a designation before the EU courts, and the 20 October cut-off leaves almost no margin. The document also confirms that the Guatemala file remains active in Brussels: the Council is not lifting the designations, it is preparing to restate them.

Source: Official Journal of the European Union, C series, C/2026/5407, 14 October 2026, section I (official reference: C/2026/5407; ELI: http://data.europa.eu/eli/C/2026/5407/oj).