EU defeat in Belarus

Belarusian opposition parties will continue to be absent from the country's parliament. In Sunday's election all 110 seats were taken by the camp of authoritarian president Alexander Lukashenko. The left-liberal newspaper Gazeta Wyborcza sees the vote as a defeat for the EU: "Sunday's election in Belarus was not really about filling seats in the country's parliament. It was a choice between receiving European benefits and having [European] sanctions lifted on the one hand, or going with the Russian pipeline with cheap gas and oil on the other. And in fact, as is usually the case with our neighbour, there was really only one person who cast his ballot: Alexander Lukashenko. ... This is a defeat for European diplomacy, for the Polish foreign ministry and for its head Radosław Sikorski, who negotiated with the Belarusian foreign minister in the name of the EU before the elections. The derision with which Lukashenko has responded is a sad and bitter lesson, which only goes to show that there is no sense in trying to do business with a dictator. But that does not mean we should forget Belarus entirely. We must seek to bring the Belarusian people closer to Europe, for example through easing visa procedures. We must give the Belarusian opposition our firm support."

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