The lack of a common EU policy against Belarus

The EU grants a number of states trading privileges as part of its development aid programme. If one of these countries violates human rights, the EU can impose sanctions by cancelling, reducing or suspending these privileges. The European Commission is currently contemplating depriving Belarus of its trading privileges, but the EU member states are far from reaching a consensus on this issue. Peteris Strautins sees this as a victory for Alexander Lukashenko, saying that the Belarusian dictator has been successful in his strategy of playing the EU states off against each other. "If at least the Baltic States and Poland could reach an agreement, Lukashenko wouldn't be able to threaten them with diverting the transit route for mineral fertilizers from the Latvian port of Ventspils to the Lithuanian port of Klaipeda. But states like Greece and Cyprus, which have never played a prominent role in defending human rights, are also against imposing sanctions. And the thing is, we're not even talking about imposing sanctions here, but about withdrawing its 'most-favoured nation treatment' – a symbolic political gesture of little economic relevance which would have minimal impact on the lives of the people of Belarus."

» full article (external link, Latvian)
More from the press review on the subject » Economy
All available articles from » Pēteris Strautiņš

» To the complete press review of Friday, September 29, 2006