“The Council strongly condemns the violence employed by the Belarusian authorities against peaceful protesters, and calls for the release of all arbitrarily detained persons, including political prisoners. Against this background, the conclusions recall the restrictive measures imposed on 40 individuals responsible for the fraudulent nature of the presidential elections and the violent crackdown on peaceful protests, and state the EU’s readiness to take further restrictive measures against entities and high-ranking officials, including Aleksandr Lukashenko.

The EU will scale down bilateral cooperation with the Belarusian authorities at central level, increase its support for the Belarusian people and civil society, and recalibrate its bilateral financial assistance accordingly. In line with that, the EU has immediately made available additional financial resources for victims of violence, civil society organisations and independent media.”

The Council today adopted conclusions on the EU’s response to the developments in Belarus. Ti read full text of conclusion click here.

“Good that EU Foreign Affairs ministers agreed to united targeted sanctions for those responsible for Navalny poisoning & added more names to Belarus sanction list, (finally) including Lukashenko,” leading Socialist MEP Kati Piri tweeted.

“As before, there are arrests of peace-loving demonstrators. That’s why we need to consider how things continue there,” German Foreign Minister Heiko Maas said prior to his meeting with EU counterparts.

“We have to acknowledge that since our last meeting nothing has improved. The Lukashenko regime continues to exercise violence, we still see arrests of peaceful demonstrators,” Maas said. 

“I proposed to pave the way for another sanctions package, and Lukashenko should be one of the people on this sanctions list,” he added as reported by Deutsche Welle.