Maltsau: Launching Small Border Traffic With Poland Is Catastrophe

According to the chairman of the State Border Committee of Belarus, the Small Border Traffic with the EU countries “is going to paralyze the whole border.”

It was said by Leanid Maltsau (Leonid Maltsev), Chairman of the State Border Committee of Belarus in an interview to BelTA.

“I would like to cite the official data of the Polish border service on the small border traffic with Ukraine. The flow of people there increases by 20-30% a year and has already made up half of the total traffic. It is twice as big as our current flow across the border with Poland. It shows that the load on our border checkpoints will considerably increase once we launch our small border traffic program. If we do it unprepared, it will be a catastrophe. The entire border would be paralyzed by us,” said Leanid Maltsau.

He noted that by signing the small border traffic agreements with Poland, Lithuania and Latvia, Belarus supported the very idea and expressed readiness to work in these formats.

“We have successfully tested the most available option – with Latvia. We took a look at how the small border traffic operates on the busiest routes and after assessing the real situation with our neighbors came to a conclusion that the program would do no good if it is used without necessary preparations,” – Maltsau stressed.

Earlier the website informed that for the last 5 years the Belarusian authorities have been intentionally blocking the small border traffic project in the Lithuanian and Polish direction.