The size of the list is irrelevant. What matters is the precedent. Restricting banking or travel based on political assessments, without criminal conviction or transparent judicial review, is a serious breach of the rule of law. Simply asserting “good reasons” is not an argument.
Labeling everyone on a sanctions list as a “criminal” or “terrorist” dodges the core issue, which is the erosion of due process. EU sanctions are administrative measures, not criminal convictions: people are listed by executive decision, often on the basis of political and security assessments, without indictment, trial, or a judgment by an independent court. That means being sanctioned does not logically equal “proven criminal”; it means the person has been designated by a political body that, by design, operates outside the safeguards of criminal procedure
Yeah sure """journalists""", the list of individuals under sanction in the EU is small and usually there's a good reason they are in that list.