EU/Belarus: EU foreign ministers said the elections in Belarus were neither "free nor fair" yesterday and discussed the possibility of imposing new sanctions against the regime.
Member states are understood to be considering several punitive options, including an extension of existing visa bans on Belarussian officials and some economic sanctions. However, formal EU proposals on a range of sanctions are not expected until April and there is a real concern that tough measures could just hurt the general public.
"The actions need to be targeted against those responsible for that. We don't want to turn our backs on the people of Belarus, we don't want to abandon them," said European external affairs commissioner Benita Ferrero-Waldner after a foreign ministers' meeting in Brussels.
The commission indicated that a visa ban on Belarus officials deemed responsible for any election rigging was likely, although it remains unclear if president Alexander Lukashenko would be barred from entering the EU. The EU has already banned six Belarussian officials from entering the bloc and the question now is how many officials it will target with any new bans.
But diplomats indicated there were divisions between member states over the scope of possible sanctions. "We might have smart sanctions which would be directed at people and companies linked to the Belarus regime," said Poland's deputy foreign minister, Stanislaw Komorowski, adding that he backed a visa ban for Mr Lukashenko.
France said it was too early to speak about the details of sanctions. "It's a situation from another age [in Belarus] requires from us an extremely firm reaction," said French foreign minister Philippe Douste-Blazy.