Marketa Gregorova: EU Should Be Ready To Renew Sanctions Against Lukashenka

The Deputy Head of the Euronest delegation urged Brussels to use all levers of influence on the official Minsk.

On Monday, July 6, a meeting of the Foreign Affairs Committee was held in Brussels in the European Parliament to discuss the situation in Belarus.

Charter97.org website provides the text of the speech by Deputy Head of the Euronest delegation, MEP from the Czech Republic, Marketa Gregorova.

“The EU should demand that the Belarusian authorities stop persecuting political opponents and allow them to register themselves as candidates. In addition, political opponents who were arrested should be released, and their persecution should stop.

The EU should also make better use of the leverage it has. Urgent assistance related to COVID-19, as well as microfinance support, should be more strictly tied to democratic conditionality. The flow of aid should be very strictly controlled, since it is not uncommon when aid is used for other purposes by the Belarusian authorities.

Also, the pre-election process and the elections themselves should be one of the main issues on the agenda of the European Commission and carefully monitored. The EU has a duty to support fellow European Belarusians, and to ensure that the escalation does not grow into violence. In the event of further violations by Lukashenka, the EU should be ready to resume sanctions lifted in 2016.

Belarusians take the first place (with a wide margin from the second) per capita regarding trips to the EU. It has been demonstrated that such trips increase adherence to European values, and motivates people to vote for more democratic forces after returning home.

The EU should be aware of these demographic trends, and use them to democratize Belarus.

The construction of the Astravets nuclear power plant is critically important from the point of view of security for the EU and should be closely monitored by the European Union.

And the last, but no less important, Belarus is subjected to enormous pressure from Russia in terms of the so-called “deepening of integration”, which will most likely lead to the loss of sovereignty by Belarus.

The EU must take this into account in its relations with Belarus ”

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