Kristeligt Dagblad: EU’s complicated games with Belarusian ”black list”

The initial list of the Belarusian businessmen affected by the EU sanctions was much longer.

Danish paper Kristeligt Dagblad writes about the European Union’s ”black lists” and Slovenia’s position regarding the sanctions against Belarusian businessman Yury Chyzh, Radio Svaboda reports.

In February in Brussels Slovenia blocked the introduction of EU sanctions against the Belarusian leadership. For that, Slovenia was criticized by other EU countries, first of all France and Poland.

Foreign Ministers of France and Poland criticized Ljubljana for neglecting the human rights problems in Belarus. The criticism was sustained by a wide range of European mass media that accused Slovenia of protection of the Belarusian regime in exchange for a multimillion-contract between the Ljubljana company Riko and Belarusian businessman Yury Chyzh. His name was the one that Slovenian Minister Karl Erjavec refused to include to the “black list” during the EU February summit.

As a matter of fact, the situation was much more complicated, Mette Skov Hansen of Kristeligt Dagblad writes. Several diplomatic sources in Brussels reported that before the February meeting of the Ministers, a range of other businessmen that support Lukashenka’s regime were on the “black list”. Right before the Brussels summit in February, European Ambassadors were going to Minsk to discuss these names.

”It was then, in Minsk, that many names disappeared. Apart from Chyzh,” the journalist quotes a source in Brussels. The name of this person is supposed to have been left on the list because the Slovenian diplomat didn’t attend the meeting in Minsk. This country simply has no diplomatic mission in Belarus.

Mads Christian Jensen, an expert from the Danish Center for European Politics, believes that this situation is an example of a trade-game always played in the EU: “There are many concerns, for example, human rights and finance. But some of them should be neglected to satisfy other interests.”

Despite the fact that the new extensive ”black list” approved in Brussels in March includes Chyzh and a couple of other Belarusian businessmen, it is far from being sufficient. For example, Belarusian businessmen and companies closely connected to the regime and standing for 50% of the Belarusian trade with the EU (export of oil and fertilizers to Holland, Germany, Latvia, Poland etc) were not included.

In this regard, Mette Skov Hansen quotes her Slovenian colleague Darja Kocbek: “Making trade deals with Belarus, the European Union realizes that it is a country where there is no big business without political connections, and that is why a list with only three businessmen is very much questionable.”

Jakob Knudsen, a representative of the Danish organisation Silba (Support Initiative for Liberty and Democracy) that works for freedom and democracy in the new EU states and their neighbors from the former USSR, shares the journalist’s concerns. He believes that the sanctions must embrace much more than only three persons, because nobody can work in Belarus without connections and support from the dictator and his security service.