STATEMENT by member of the European Pparliament Petras Auštrevičius on freezing cooperation with Belarusian authorities within the EU Eastern Partnership policy framework

Brus­sels, 10 September2020

“I am appalled by and strong­ly deplore the behav­iour of Belaru­sian author­i­ties towards Belaru­sian cit­i­zens peace­ful­ly protest­ing against fraud­u­lent elec­tion results and call­ing for a new pres­i­den­tial elec­tion in accor­dance to the inter­na­tion­al elec­tion stan­dards.

Until Belaru­sian author­i­ties ceasetheir bru­tal behav­iour, restore the basic human rights and fun­da­men­tal free­doms and enter into a dia­logue with Belaru­sian cit­i­zens to orga­nize a peace­ful pow­er trans­fer, the EU has to stop any engage­ment and coop­er­a­tion with Belaru­sian author­i­ties in the pro­grams and ini­tia­tives under the EU East­ern Part­ner­ship pol­i­cy. All the EUsup­port to Belarus, includ­ing the addi­tion­al fund­sof EUR 53 mil­lion, has to be direct­ly chan­nelled to and­for the ben­e­fit of Belaru­sian peo­ple via the civ­il soci­ety actors and orga­ni­za­tions.

A spe­cial mech­a­nism enabling such dis­tri­b­u­tion of the EU funds has to be imme­di­ate­ly devel­oped by tak­ing the best prac­tices of the devel­op­ment coop­er­a­tion agen­ciesof the EU Mem­ber States, the Euro­pean Endow­ment for Democ­ra­cy, the East­ern Part­ner­ship Civ­il Soci­ety Foru­mand oth­er inter­na­tion­al orga­ni­za­tions work­ing in Belarus.

Many Belaru­sian civ­il soci­ety orga­ni­za­tions are deprived of offi­cial reg­is­tra­tion in Belarus and are reg­is­tered in the EU Mem­ber States. These orga­ni­za­tions should not be exclud­ed from orga­ni­za­tions eli­gi­ble for the EU sup­port. More­over, they require apartic­u­lar assis­tance with legal and oper­a­tional mat­ters in the coun­try of their reg­is­tra­tion. Also, their rep­re­sen­ta­tives should be exempt to strict Covid-19 relat­ed­trav­el­rules and to be allowed to enter the coun­try where orga­ni­za­tion isreg­is­tered.

Posi­tion of the Belaru­sian civ­il soci­ety actors and orga­ni­za­tions should be tak­en into con­sid­er­a­tion when decid­ing upon dis­tri­b­u­tion and chan­nelling of the EU finan­cial sup­port.”

STATEMENT