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EU to base its assessment of Belarus’ electoral amendments on OSCE’s conclusion, official says

The European Union will base its assessment of Belarus’ amendments to the Electoral Code on the basis of a conclusion of the OSCE, an official of the European Commission told a group of Belarusian journalists in Brussels last week.

The EU has already started to study the bill, the official said without elaborating.

On December 11, the House of Representatives voted to give second-reading approval to the bill of amendments, unveiled by the central election commission a few weeks ahead of a meeting of the European Union foreign ministers at which they discussed the extension of the suspension of visa restrictions against top Belarusian officials.

The provision that would allow election monitors to observe ballot counts from a distance that would enable them to clearly see the process was removed from the initial version of the bill before the parliamentary debate. Political analysts viewed the provision as one of the few crucial changes proposed by the commission.

In an interview with BelaPAN earlier this month, Jens Eschenbaecher, spokesman for the OSCE Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights (ODIHR), said that the agency had not received the amendments for review despite an appropriate agreement reached this past February.

Another official of the European Commission told the Belarusian journalists that the EU also would use the OSCE’s conclusions in assessing forthcoming election campaigns in Belarus.

When asked to comment on whether the decision of Alyaksandr Lukashenka to run in the next presidential election might affect Minsk’s relations with the EU, which refused to recognize the 2004 referendum resulting into the abolition of the constitutional limit to Mr. Lukashenka’s presidential terms, the official said that such a decision would run counter to democratic standards. He warned that Belarus needs foreign economic support as the economic crisis, expected to continue in the next few years, will eventually affect the country. Belarus may get under the grip of Russian oligarchs if Minsk refuses to carry out democratic reform to improve ties with the EU, the official warned. //BelaPAN