EU Targets Travel Firms Stoking Belarus Border Crisis
EU Proposes Blacklisting Travel Firms That Help Smuggle Migrants
(Bloomberg) -- Travel and transport firms that aid people-trafficking face a European Union crackdown in an effort to prevent Belarus President Alexander Lukashenko from using irregular migration as a threat against the EU.
Adina Valean, responsible for transport at the European Commission, the EU’s executive arm, told reporters the proposed measures would include curtailing the rights of transport operators to operate in the EU, denying them the right to fly over the bloc, call at ports, make technical stops, as well as banning them from transiting through EU territory.
The new mechanism aimed at punishing those who facilitate the smuggling of migrants into the EU is the latest response to the crisis at the Belarusian border, where the government has been accused of conducting hybrid attacks against the bloc by sending thousands of irregular migrants to the borders of Poland, Lithuania and Latvia.
The move comes two days after Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki warned that Europe faces a “synchronized” security threat from the border crisis. Last week, Lukashenko appeared willing to deescalate the situation following phone calls with outgoing German Chancellor Angela Merkel.
According to documents seen by Bloomberg, the EU believes that recent events could not have taken place without the involvement of some transport operators, knowingly or unknowingly.
Any measures imposed on operators would be proportionate to the particulars of each case, according to the documents. Valean said the blacklisting, to be applied to operators from planes to ferries and lorries, would be valid for a year and could be renewed if necessary.
Earlier this month, the EU’s foreign ministers amended the bloc’s sanction regime so that it can target individuals and entities involved in human trafficking. The EU is currently finalizing a fifth package of sanctions that is expected to impose restrictive measures on about 30 individuals and entities, according to people familiar with the matter.
The EU has so far sanctioned 166 individuals and 15 entities over the fraudulent 2020 Belarusian presidential elections and the regime’s crackdown on protesters. The bloc also adopted a series of economic measures, as well as a ban on the overflight of EU airspace and on access to EU airports by Belarusian carriers, following the forced landing of a Ryanair flight in May and the detention of a journalist. There is already talk of a sixth package of measures, the people said.
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