The European Commission (EC) threatened to suspend the agreement on the simplification of the visa regime with Belarus in response to the actions of the Belarusian authorities on the artificial creation of a migration crisis in Europe. This is stated in the statement of the European Commissioner on the internal affairs of Ilva Johansson, reports TASS.
She said that the EC proposes to tighten the rules for entering the European Union (EU) for Belarusian officials and diplomats. According to her, new sanctions should be an answer to the attempts of the Belarusian authorities “destabilize the EU”, using illegal migration as a tool.
“We see that the EU sanctions actually caused a blow to the regime [Belarusian President Alexander] Lukashenko, and he is now desperately trying to destabilize the EU in response. We will never be weak in front of Lukashenko,” Johansson emphasized.
The European Commission explained that the decision on a partial freezing of an agreement to simplify the visa regime should approve the Council of the European Union. After that, Belarusian officials and diplomats, as well as the judges of the Constitutional and Supreme Courts of Belarus, will have to approve additional documents to substantiate the goals of travel to EU countries. In addition, the cost of registration of a visa will grow from 35 to 70 euros.
From the end of May, Lithuanian, Polish and Latvian border guards began to delay large groups of illegal migrants from Africa and from the Middle East, which began to fall into European countries from the territory of Belarus. In what is happening the power of European countries accused Minsk and personally Alexander Lukashenko.