Violence against protesters: Come EU sanctions against Belarus?

in the light of recent developments, the European Union will carry out "an in-depth Review" of its relations with Belarus, said in a Tuesday evening statement issued by the EU high representative for foreign Affairs Mr Josep Borrell: "This can include, among other things, measures to be taken against those for the observed violence and the unjustified arrests and the falsification of the election results are to be responsible." In other words, the Regime in Minsk, sanctions threatened.

Reinhard Veser

editor in the policy.

it's not the first sanctions imposed by the EU against Belarus. Since 2004, the community had resorted to this means to respond to violations of human rights Lukaschenkas. The largest part of these sanctions, however, was in February of 2016, is repealed. The EU wanted to reward a supposed Opening up of the regime of Aleksandr Lukashenka: He had left in the summer of 2015, the last political prisoners free after the violent smashing of the Demonstration against the Manipulation of the presidential election of 2010 was still in confinement, among them the former presidential candidate Mikalay Statkevich, who is since a few weeks in prison.

That his release at that time were not the real reason for the lifting of sanctions, shows, however, at the time the decision like this: shortly after the presidential election in October 2015, which was neither free and fair, as all the other elections since Lukaschenkas rise to Power. However, since the beginning of the war in the Ukraine, a cautious rapprochement between the EU and Belarus had begun. They came from both sides.