EU ambassadors approve new sanctions against Belarus

July 26, BPN. The European Union’s Permanent Representative Committee has approved new sanctions against Belarus, the Spanish Presidency of the EU Council has tweeted.

The measures are considered in response to alleged human rights abuses in the country and involvement of its authorities in Russia’s war on Ukraine. The restrictions will affect both individuals and companies.

Rikard Jozwiak, a Brussels-based RFE/RL journalist, noted that the new sanctions target aviation and dual-use goods. “More important: no derogation for Belarusian potash,” he tweeted noting that the issue might resurface this fall.

Since October 2022, the EU adopted six sanctions packages against Belarus over human rights abuses, allegations of vote rigging in the 2020 presidential election, the forced landing of the Ryanair flight in Minsk, the artificially engineered migrant crisis and the country’s complicity in Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

Officials in Minsk say that sanctions on potash should be lifted because of possible increases in the world’s famine levels. Belarusian opposition politicians argue that softening Western sanctions on the Belarusian potash sector is unacceptable.