BELARUS NEWS AND ANALYSIS

DATE:

05/12/2006

Belarus faces fresh EU trade sanctions threat

By Andrew Rettman

EUOBSERVER / BRUSSELS - The European Commission has renewed a push to impose mini-trade sanctions against Belarus for violation of trade union norms, with Belarus opposition leader Aleksander Milinkevich "cautiously" welcoming the move.

EU member states on Tuesday (5 December) held initial talks on Brussels' recommendation, with Belarus' trading neighbours Latvia, Lithuania and Poland still opposed but with Italy now in favour of the move.

Italy's approval means EU agriculture ministers will be able to rubber stamp the decision on 20 December, with due process seeing Belarus being kicked out of the EU's Generalised System of Preferences (GSP) on trade in mid-2007.

"Belarus' trade union reforms have not been sufficient to merit the withdrawal of our proposal," a commission spokesman said. "We feel strongly confident that this will go through with the necessary support."

The commission already submitted the recommendation once in August this year, but it unravelled when Italy blocked the move in an attempt to push pro-Belarus sanction states, such as UK and Sweden, to yield to Italian needs in a separate shoe trade dispute.

"The shoe issue is over, so Poland does not have a blocking minority any more," an EU diplomat stated. "The Belarusians have done nothing - the smart move would have been to implement temporary trade union reforms and then take them away once the GSP threat had passed."

Belarus still has a chance to turn things around before the mid-2007 implementation deadline however, EU officials say, with El Salvador already setting a precedent for last-minute reforms that led to the EU halting a GSP expulsion process.

Jobs would go

The sanctions would see tariffs worth some EUR400 million a year imposed on Belarus textile and wood exports - but not energy exports - to the EU, and could cost up to 100,000 jobs especially among small traders in the border regions.

Reacting to the news Mr Milinkevich told EUobserver "I have always been cautious about trade sanctions because they impact ordinary people" and warned that Minsk could spin GSP against Brussels if the EU does not follow-up with a "broad information campaign."

"But of course it's the Belarus government that has brought this about," he added. "If there are sanctions, they would be fully justified in terms of what Belarus has signed up to [in the conventions of the International Labour Organisation]."

Strasbourg trip planned

Mr Milinkevich confirmed he will come to Strasbourg next week to pick up a human rights award, the European Parliament's Sakharov prize, but said recent events - which have seen him briefly arrested and released three times - do not bode well.

"I plan to come and I hope they [the authorities] let me go. These arrests seem like they are looking for a pretext to stop me. But I am hopeful it will go well," he said.

Source:

http://euobserver.com/24/23032