EU'S ONLINE MAP FOR SANCTIONS MAZE

The European union is launching an interactive online map to help businesses and officials steer through the-

Jungle of international sanctions in force against regimes, organizations and individuals around the world.

With around 30 or 40 international sanctions regimes in force against regimes such as North Korea, Syria Zimbabwe, as well as designated terror groups including the Taliban and the Islamic State group.

Knowing who is targeted in which area can be difficult.

They are laid out in hundreds of pages dense legal text making it hard for businesses and administrators to be sure who they can do deals with legally.

Breaching international sanctions can have major repercussions, as French Bank BNP Paribas learned when the US fined it $8.9 billion for illegal transactions with Iran, Sudan, Myanmar and Cuba.

Fears of breaking sanction laws have led some into ''overcompliance'' -avoiding trading with companies or countries that are in fact not subject to restrictions   -while some unscrupulous regimes take advantage of the confusion to flout measures.

Estonia, which holds the  EU's rotating presidency and developed the map, says that members states and EU institutions deal with ''thousands of enquiries''  every day from companies and officials unsure of which sanctions they need to follow.

''There are right now hundreds of legal acts that shape the sanctions regime. The Al-Qaeda sanctions only represent more than 300 legal acts,'' Juuli Hiio, a sanctions expert at the Estonian foreign ministry, told AFP.

An EU official said a dedicated European Commission email helpline was typically bombarded with queries about sanctions after new measures were adopted, adding that the new map was a ''very welcome and complementary tool.''

Up to now the EU has maintained a 136-page list of sanctions, with links to hundreds of detailed acts, she said, but it is currently only updated twice a year.