News

On 13 October, during European Union’s General Affairs and External Relations Council meeting in Luxembourg, Minister of Foreign Affairs of Lithuania Petras Vaitiekūnas and his counterparts from other EU Member States discussed how the EU would further develop its co-operation with Belarus after the country had held parliamentary election.

According to the Council conclusions on Belarus, the election that took place on 28 September did not make a major difference from the previous elections and did not comply with the democracy criteria established by the the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe.

Having regretted that Belarus failed to support its declared aspirations for democratic and transparent parliamentary election with real actions, the EU foreign ministers decided to extend restrictions applied to Belarusian officials for one more year.

However, taking into account the decision by Belarusian authorities to release all former country’s political prisoners, it was decided to suspend the EU travel ban on certain officials of Belarus. The partial suspension would be valid for a period of six months.

“After having evaluated a change of geopolitical situation in the EU’s Eastern Neighbourhood, the Council adopted a balanced decision. We hope that Belarus will make use of the new opportunities in order to strengthen its European direction of development”, minister P.Vaitiekūnas said.