Stanislau Shushkevich: EU should abolish visas fees for Belarusians

This would be a concrete step to help Belarusians as the fee is very high for Belarusian people, said politician.

Stanislau Shushkevich told Europolitics about it on 26 March, while in Washington, after sneaking out of Belarus in defiance of government authorities, who he said had tried to stop him leaving. Speaking at the Heritage Foundation think tank where he was presented with a Medal for Freedom, Shushkevich, who as president from 1991 to 1994 convened the December 1991 summit that led to the Soviet Union's dissolution, was deeply critical of his successor, President Alexander Lukashenko. But he also criticised the EU's policy on Belarus as being "too fidgety". For instance, he had harsh words for former EU foreign policy representative Javier Solana, whom he slammed for not setting any conditions to the EU having talks with Lukashenko, a leader who is often referred to as "Europe's last dictator" due to his repressive, authoritarian rule.

Shushkevich’s views on the EU were echoed at a separate event by Belarus expert Matthew Rojansky, deputy director of the Russia and Eurasia Programme at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. “The EU should eliminate the €60 visa fee unilaterally if it wants to help Belarusians,” he argued, instead of only offering this to Lukashenko as part of a deal. Speaking at Johns Hopkins University, on 27 March, Rojansky said that the EU could impose conditions on this, such as limiting the fee waiver to people under 35 years old, and that the EU could still maintain its travel bans and asset freezes against high-level Belarus officials. But Rojansky suggested that while the EU’s financial and diplomatic sanctions against Minsk “may be morally satisfying [...] they play into Lukashenko’s hands” because being blacklisted “becomes a badge of loyalty” for the president. On the other hand, EU and US aid given to Belarus opposition groups “makes them targets for extermination” by Lukashenko. The policy expert from Carnegie served as an OSCE observer in the December 2010 Belarus presidential elections. Rojansky said he was “really lucky to get out” without getting caught up in Lukashenko’s violent clampdown on the protests against the results. “The polling station where I was phoned in a pre-determined 79% for Lukashenko,” he noted.