Mr President, after the completion of the process of enlargement and of European construction following the Convention and the new Union Treaty of 2003, the European Union will have new borders which will not only require a new form of economic, social and cultural partnership and cooperation with these new neighbours but also, above all, a firm, very broad and effective common foreign and defence policy. The reasons depend on the importance of these new neighbours, from the Ukraine and Georgia to Belarus, in which the presence of the giant Russia plays a pivotal role. It is therefore a great challenge for the European Union to do the right thing in terms of how relations with these countries develop. One of these countries, Belarus, borders Latvia, Lithuania and Poland and, until 1996, had developed in a fairly similar way to the other former members of the USSR but, since that year, it has taken an authoritarian course which has restricted human rights and democracy and imposed abusive social controls which prevent the European Union from establishing mechanisms for relations, association and cooperation such as the ones it has put in place with the rest of these countries. So much so that the three European institutions which have monitored the development of events in Belarus, the OSCE, the Council of Europe and the European Union – the parliamentary troika – has had no hesitation in describing these events as incompatible with minimum democratic requirements and has suspended its relations with that Republic until those requirements are met. The presentation of this resolution has been delayed considerably as a result of having to convert an initial draft report on the European Union’s relations with Belarus into an own-initiative resolution by the Committee on Foreign Affairs, Human Rights, Common Security and Defence Policy due to the deterioration of the situation in terms of the exercise of democracy and respect for human rights in that country. In 1995, the European Union had prepared an agreement on trade and commercial cooperation based on the agreement which had existed since 1989 between the USSR and the European Economic Community and furthermore the victory of Lukashenko had given rise to a degree of hope. But all of this became deadlocked when in 1996 President Lukashenko put the brakes on the democratisation process. The authoritarian approach of Lukashenko has been characterised by the adoption of mechanisms to harass the opposition, to eliminate critical voices and to create a network of patronage by means of abuses of power and at the same time has tried to come closer to and more dependent on Russia, which Putin has recently pulled back from. The various elections held since 1996 have been described by the parliamentary troika as lacking in effective democratic guarantees. This has lead to the consolidation of a democratic opposition platform which has been maturing and which involves a broad spectrum, ranging from parties on the right to parties on the left – the communist party for example – which agree on fundamental aspects such as the establishment of democracy, partnership and, when appropriate, integration into the European Union. Awareness of the need for democracy is increasing within Belarusian society and there are increasing numbers of members of the current Parliament of Belarus in favour of democratic reforms which bring the legal framework for freedoms closer to the requirements of the European Union. Therefore the recommendation which we in the European Union must make, and which we are proposing in this resolution, combines two considerations: on the one hand, a firm rejection of reaching an association agreement at this time since that would imply a legitimisation of the current authoritarian regime and would hinder the establishment of democracy, and, on the other, an increase in initiatives which send a clear signal of cooperation and solidarity – with the victims of Chernobyl, for example – or coming closer in social, cultural and trade union terms which will allow democracy to be restored. This is what our proposal is aimed at. We must not forget the important role Russia can play in this process. I would like to end by thanking all the members of the Committee on Foreign Affairs for their significant cooperation and I must finally acknowledge that I do not accept some of the amendments proposed by my own group for the reasons I have just given.

Political group: GUE-NGL