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“It seems that neither the president of the EVS nor the president of the Commission can say what the sanctions will be, because that requires the consensus of the 27 member states. This was probably the most important message: after Lukashenko hijacked a civilian plane between Athens and Vilnius, the EU reacted very quickly and the decisions of the EVS were made very quickly.
I am pleased that the absolute majority of the position points that the Government of the Republic of Lithuania deemed necessary to include in the EU response were included. Decisions started very quickly and the EC coordinates those decisions at its level quite fluently. Of course, the sanctions debate will take time, but it will certainly take place. The agreement will be the one that the 27 members can reach.
You probably wouldn’t be able to guess beforehand, but I think even when we talk about personal sanctions, it’s a question of how far we are lagging behind in real life in sanctioning those people who are de facto involved in these terrible things. “I said after the meeting. .Simonytė.
According to her, when considering sanctions against Belarus, it should be borne in mind that the regime of the Belarusian authoritarian leader Aliaksandr Lukashenko receives part of the funds from the Kremlin regime, the other party – in other ways, including the possibility of participating in Western markets.
“And when we talk about economic sanctions, we still have to understand that Lukashenko is sitting on a dagger and he needs to finance that dagger in some way.”
Of course, part of the money is helped by the Kremlin regime, but the other part comes from various forms of opportunities to participate in Western markets, be it by borrowing in Western markets or in some other export transactions through the which the coin is earned.
That is all I think the EU will have to consider, “said the head of government.
We recall that the EU and other Western countries have been increasing pressure on Belarus since last August’s presidential elections, in which the winners were announced by the country’s long-time authoritarian leader, Lukashenko. The West does not recognize its legitimacy.
Tensions escalated when a Ryanair passenger plane flying from Athens to Vilnius landed in Minsk on May 23, and blogger Raman Pratasevičius and his friend Sofija Sapega were detained at the airport.
As a result of the incident, EU leaders agreed to ban Belarusian airlines from flying into the bloc and urged EU airlines not to fly into Belarusian airspace.
The leaders also instructed the EU’s foreign policy chief Josep Borrell to draft more “targeted economic sanctions” against the Belarusian government and expand the “black list” of those accused of cracking down on the opposition.
It currently includes 88 representatives of the regime and seven companies.
