Automate EU sanctions screening for customer onboarding, payments and re-screening.
The EU Consolidated FSF list synced every 15 minutes to keep pace with new designations.
synced 7 min ago
The European Union's single list of individuals, groups, and entities subject to EU financial sanctions. Published by the European Commission.
If you confirm a match
FreezeFreeze the party's funds and economic resources. Do not make them available. Report to your national authority.
Handle EU sanctions compliance without flooding your team with alerts.
Every EU result includes the exact list version checked, for your audit trail.
We never store the names or personal data you submit for screening.
No downtime when you hit plan limit. Extra usage is billed automatically.
Proprietary fuzzy matching for name variations, backed by IDs and attributes.
Every EU match comes with a score and a human-readable reason.
Average response of ~200 ms, ideal for onboarding and payment screening.
Screen counterparties and transactions wherever compliance decisions happen.
| Use case | Who to screen | When to screen |
|---|---|---|
| Customer onboarding (KYC) | New customers | Before the account is opened |
| Business onboarding (KYB) | Companies, vendors, and UBOs | Before the relationship starts |
| Loan origination | Borrowers | Before a loan is approved |
| Payment processing | Senders and beneficiaries | Before a payment is released |
| Trade and exports | Buyers, consignees, and end users | Before goods are shipped |
| Ongoing re-screening | Existing customers | After each list update |
For developers
Integrate EU screening into your application
with a single POST request.
Your own reference ID comes back with every result
Choose the lists each request screens against
One JSON response with scores, reasons, and list versionExample request
REST API
POST https://api.sanctionslookup.com/v1/screen Authorization: Bearer YOUR_API_KEY { "subject": { "subject_ref": "cust_1024", "type": "INDIVIDUAL", "name": "Maria Gonzalez" }, "options": { "sources": ["eu_cons"] } }
All plans cover:
OFAC
EU
UN
UK
Canada
Switzerland
Australia1 screening = 1 subject screened. No lock-ins. Never cut off if you go over.
Book a quick call to talk through your setup, or get an API key and
make your first test calls with 100 free requests.
No annual lock-ins
Free tools and guides to improve your sanctions screening.
EU sanctions screening checks customers, counterparties and payments against the EU's consolidated list of people and organisations under financial sanctions. The EU calls sanctions "restrictive measures": the Council of the EU adopts them under the Common Foreign and Security Policy (CFSP), and Council regulations make them binding in every Member State. A confirmed match means the party's assets must be frozen.
The EU Consolidated Financial Sanctions List (FSF), published by the European Commission. It covers every person, group and entity under an EU asset freeze across all sanctions programs, including UN Security Council designations once the EU adopts them. New UN listings appear early under the transitional UNLI code. Measures without an asset freeze, such as travel bans and sector-wide trade restrictions, aren't in the FSF. The EU Sanctions Map describes those.
The Commission updates the list whenever the Council adopts new listings, amendments or delistings, with no fixed schedule. New listings usually apply from the day they are published in the Official Journal of the EU, so we check for changes every 15 minutes. Every response states the list version it used: the file date, our download time and the file's SHA-256 hash.
EU sanctions apply within EU territory, to EU nationals anywhere in the world, to companies incorporated in a Member State, inside or outside the EU, and to any business done in whole or in part in the EU. Banks, payment and e-money institutions, crypto-asset service providers, lenders, insurers and exporters routinely screen. Each Member State sets its own penalties, and Directive (EU) 2024/1226 makes violating EU sanctions a criminal offence across the EU.
The API returns a match score, not a verdict, so first confirm the identity by comparing date of birth, nationality and ID numbers with the list entry. If the match is confirmed, freeze the party's funds and economic resources, make none available to them, and report to your national competent authority. Under the Russia regime (Regulation 269/2014), frozen assets must be reported within two weeks. If you can't resolve whether it's the same person, EU guidance says to contact the competent authority.
In principle, yes. The freeze also reaches entities a listed person owns or controls. EU guidance treats ownership as holding 50% or more of an entity, and control can exist below that, for example through the right to appoint the board. The API matches the names the EU publishes, so an unlisted subsidiary won't match on its own. Screen the company's beneficial owners (UBOs) too, and treat a match on an owner as a red flag for the company.
Many EU-listed names are transliterated from Cyrillic or Arabic and are spelled several ways. The API fuzzy-matches each name against the primary name and all aliases in the EU file, so common spelling variants still match, and every match comes with a score and the reasons behind it. Add date of birth, nationality or ID numbers to help separate true matches from false positives, and set min_score to choose what counts as a match.
Screening means sending names and personal data, so the less your provider keeps, the less risk you carry. We use the names and attributes you submit only to run the check and never store them, in line with GDPR's data minimisation principle. Each response returns your own subject_ref, so you can link results to your records without sharing more than the check needs.
Yes. Use the sources option to choose the lists each request checks: the EU list alone, or together with the UN Security Council Consolidated List, OFAC's SDN and Consolidated lists, the UK Sanctions List, and the Canadian, Swiss and Australian lists. Each list in the response carries its own version details, so your audit trail shows exactly what was checked.
Average response time is about 200 ms, fast enough to screen during onboarding or before a payment is released. The batch endpoint screens up to 50 subjects per request, which suits re-screening your customer base after a list update. One screening is one subject, new accounts get 100 free screenings, and paid plans start at $149 a month.
SanctionsLookup
