The EU report is “frozen” because the situation in Belarus hasn’t improved

• 28.09.2007, 15:28

The report of the EU deputy Bastiaan Belder was “frozen” because“ since 2004 the situation in Belarus hasn’t improved, but has become even more repressive”. Janusz Onyszkewicz, polish deputy, deputy chairman of the EP International Relations Committee declared.

Early, the Belarusian Ministry of Foreign Affairs declared that Belder’s appointment for a post of a rapporteur for Belarus is the evidence of “the constructive forms of cooperation”. According to the MEA spokesman Andrei Papou, “this appointment means that the EP is not more propagating the confrontation positions, as it did before”.

J. Onyszkewicz declared, that having B. Belder, appointed as a rapporteur of the EP for Belarus in 2004 by the International Relations Committee, was to compile the report not on the situation in the country, but on what the Partnership and Cooperation Treaty between the EU and Belarus should be. The EU signs such a treaty with every country that joined the European Neighbourhood Policy. Belarus is the only country that hasn’t signed the treaty, being the EU Neighbour.

Polish deputy stressed that the prepared by Belder document “reflects not his own attitude, but the EU’s one and it is “frozen together with the agreement”.

According to J. Onyszkewicz, the EP as other European structures waits that “Minsk stops making mere announcements of the readiness to cooperate and demonstrates it on practice”. “We need to free the Belarusian people, taken by the throat by the authorities”, - J. Onyszkewicz thinks. The first thing the Belarusian authorities should do is “the discharging of the political prisoners”, then the simplification the registering procedure of the NGO and political parties. “These will be the real steps towards the EU”, the deputy declared.