Republic

In due time the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe put an end to those minimum contacts which it had with Belarus. However recently we have seen some intensification of the dialogue, the speaker of the House of Representatives of the National assembly of Belarus, Vadim Popov, said at a meeting with PACE President Luis Maria de Puig in St. Petersburg on April 4. “We are happy that the former leadership of PACE visited the Republic of Belarus. Belarus follows the recommendations of the Council of Europe,” the Belarusian politician said. One of them was to set up an information centre in Belarus. Now the technical project on opening such a centre in Belarusian State University is being worked through. He stressed that the opening of the PACE Office in Belarus is another step forwards. At the same the speaker said that the accession of Belarus’ neighbours into the Schengen zone has brought new challenges. “Belarus has taken unilateral steps to simplify the trips to Belarus. You just have to pay a consular duty and this is it. However, the reciprocal steps have been few,” Vadim Popov said. The Belarusian parliament is completing the work on the agreements with Poland, Lithuania and Latvia to ease the situation. At the spring session the parliament of Belarus will complete all necessary interstate procedures in respect of these documents, Vadim Popov said. Vadim Popov noted that the issue of development of the infrastructure on the EU border remains an important problem. The Belarusian border is the only barrier on the way of drugs, weapons, illegal migration to the EU. Freight flows to and from the EU also necessitate equipping customs terminals. “We need the border which would function in the interests of the EU countries and in the interests of Belarus. We have seen more understanding recently and the EU allocates some part of the money. The process has started, and needs to be accelerated,” Vadim Popov said. In turn, Luic Maria de Puig said that PACE would like to see the dialogue with Belarus develop. “We need to engage in the dialogue to achieve those common goals we set before ourselves,” the PACE President said. At the same time the situation is like this: Belarus is a European country but is not a member of the Council of Europe. In his opinion, developing a constructive dialogue should “promote closer contacts between Belarus and European countries for the Republic of Belarus to become member of the Council of Europe.”