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Still flying to Berlin: A plane from the state-owned Belavia airline
Photo: Nimdamer / Getty Images
Charles Michel is proud of this Tuesday lunchtime: of himself and his EU.
»Europe in Action«, tweeted the Belgian EU Council President.
And also posts a screenshot of the flightradar24.com portal.
It shows Belarus aircraft-free - surrounded by yellow jet symbols that fly around the country's borders.
One might think that Belarus is now isolated from the outside world.
And with him the regime of dictator Alexander Lukashenko, which on Sunday forced a Ryanair Boeing to land in Minsk while overflight - and arrested the opposition Roman Protasevich there with his partner.
But in reality it is different.
At 12:22 p.m., when Michel publishes his tweet, flightradar24 indicates that a passenger plane from Minsk is currently flying over Warsaw.
The Embraer 175 heads for BER: the new Berlin airport.
"Belavia" is written in blue on her torso.
That is the name of the state-owned Belarusian airline.
At their summit the evening before, the EU heads of state and government had unanimously decided that Belarusian airlines will in future neither use EU airspace nor take off and land at EU airports.
But the individual states are once again at odds with regard to implementation.
A good three quarters of an hour after Michel's tweet, this Belavia machine lands in Berlin.
"The flight from Minsk is completely regular," said a spokesman for BER when asked by SPIEGEL. "We have not yet received any instructions from the authorities to the contrary."
"France has advanced"
According to a spokeswoman for the Federal Ministry of Transport, there is still no legal basis for a landing ban.
»The EU summit yesterday instructed the Council of Ministers to create a European legal basis for action.
Work on it started today, ”she said.
"Our focus is on a coordinated European approach."
However, it does not look really coordinated how the EU governments are handling the Belavia machines.
A Belavia plane lands in Stockholm on Tuesday morning - only to fly back to Belarus shortly afterwards.
On the other hand, the Belarusian state line has to cancel a flight to Paris scheduled for Tuesday, among other things.
Because France has imposed an immediate landing ban.
In Berlin, this causes head shaking: "France has pushed ahead," it is said from government circles.
"We want to give opposition members from Belarus the chance to get out by plane." The government closed the land and rail border crossings to the west to a large extent some time ago during the corona pandemic.
128 jets over Belarus
The sky over Belarus is not nearly as empty this Tuesday as Charles Michel's tweet suggests.
According to data from Flightradar24, 128 aircraft passed the airspace of Belarus in the ten hours between 0:00 and 10:00 a.m. of coordinated universal time (UTC), i.e. between 3:00 a.m. and 1:00 p.m. local time.
On normal days, the airspace is flown over by around 200 machines during this period, says a flight radar spokesman.
These 128 aircraft include jets from Asian lines such as Air China or Air India with the destination Frankfurt, several cargo planes from or to Leipzig and several private jets with German registration.
After all, the larger EU passenger airlines are hardly represented: The summit appeal by the heads of state and government is having an effect to avoid flights through Belarusian airspace.
Many European airlines have announced that they will implement it.
The Belavia machine starts up again at BER in the afternoon at 2:19 p.m.
She takes off, in the direction of Minsk.
The Belarusian state line plans to fly to Berlin again on Friday.
