Belarusian MFA accuses EU of “economic discrimination”
- 30.10.2009, 14:04
Officials say the European Union applies discriminative restrictive measures against Belarusian goods.
The MFA seeks to restore the level of cooperation that the two parties had before September 1997 (when Brussels imposed a series of sanctions against Belarus), Alyaksei Skrypko, the head of the chief department for Europe of the Foreign Ministry of Belarus, said on October 30 at a scientific conference “Belarus in the Present-Day World”, BelaPAN reports.
Belarus was excluded from the Generalized System of Preferences, used by most world countries, the MFA representative said. He also called unfair the practice of allocating quotas for import of certain types of Belarusian goods, especially, in textile and light industries.
“Such quotes contradict the WTO norms,” Skrypko said and added that many European politicians admit such discriminative measures are pointless, but continue to follow that policy.
Skrypko also stated prohibitive tariffs on Belarusian high-technology and agricultural products infringe Belarus’s interests in terms of export to the EU. The duty on several types of products of the Belarusian engineering industry (including haulers, tractors, etc) exceeds 30% of the cost, the duty on oil makes up 82% and on beef – 90% of the cost. “In fact, this is a kind of economic sanctions,” Alyaksei Skrypko noted. According to Skrypko, the greater part of Belarusian export to the EU falls on raw materials (80%).
Alyaksei Skrypko said Belarus was interested in EU’s support of ratification of Belarus-initiated amendment to an annex of the Kyoto Protocol, which would allow the country to trade unused carbon dioxide quotas.
“Unfortunately, we haven’t reached understanding on this issue with our western partners,” he added.
Skrypko also said about unsatisfactory financial aid to Belarus from the European Commission.
He said the financial aid the European Commission grants to Belarus within the framework of the European Neighbourhood and Partnership Project is unreasonably small compared to the aid granted to other countries of Eastern Europe. In 2007-2010, the European Commission is to grant Belarus €21 million.
“To compare, Ukraine is to receive €494 million, Moldova €209 million, Georgia €120 million, Armenia and Azerbaijan €100 million each,” the diplomat said. He also noted that the European Commission restricts its support for the projects in state sector of Belarus which is also unjustified.
We remind that in 2003, the ILO Governing Body decided to start up an investigation of Belarusian issue in the connection of claim of the independent trade unions. As a result, Belarus was excluded from the EU Generalized System of Preferences in June 2007.
The Belarusian government must fulfil 12 ILO recommendations to return the preferences. They are: to allow independent trade unions to register their primary organizations; to give them the same rights official trade unions have; to stop persecution of people according to their membership in trade unions; to give all trade union associations the right to take part in considering important social issues.
A probation period the European Union gave to the Belarusian authorities expires in November. Depending on the democracy situation in Belarus, it will be decided in November whether the EU sanctions on the Belarusian regime to be prolonged or lifted. The Belarusian authorities should release political prisoners, stop repressions against opposition, give freedom to the mass media and NGOs, change the Electoral Code to carry out free and democratic elections in the country. None of these conditions has been fulfilled so far.