Belarus: EU wants to put sanctions into force

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Migrants on the Belarusian-Polish border

Photo: Leonid Shcheglov / AP

Representatives of the EU member states have approved a new list of sanctions against those involved in the smuggling of migrants into Belarus.

The list includes people and organizations who are said to have supported Belarus in smuggling migrants to the European external borders, as EU diplomats in Brussels said on Wednesday.

The sanctions are due to come into force on Thursday.

According to the information, the list includes 17 responsible persons and eleven organizations.

The names of those affected were not known for the time being.

The fifth EU sanctions package against Belarus is targeting airlines, travel agencies and other responsible persons, according to the foreign representative Josep Borrell.

It is an open secret that the state-owned Belarusian airline Belavia is on the sanctions list.

In the future, it should no longer be allowed to use machines from European companies that lease aircraft.

The aim is to prevent Belavia from being able to fly so many people from poor or conflict-ridden countries to Minsk to be smuggled into the EU.

In addition, the Syrian airline Cham Wings is said to be on the list.

She also made a lot of money transporting migrants to Belarus.

The EU foreign ministers decided to tighten sanctions against Belarus in mid-November.

Thus, for the first time, the EU is also making "the instrumentalization of migrants for political purposes" a criminal offense.

Since the beginning of the year, according to the EU Commission, almost 8,000 migrants have come to the EU via Belarus: almost 4,300 of them to Lithuania, around 3,200 to Poland and more than 400 to Latvia.

The EU accuses Belarusian ruler Alexander Lukashenko of targeting migrants to the EU's external borders in order to retaliate against previous EU sanctions.

Minsk rejects the allegations.

as / dpa / AFP