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| - The EU is to expand its sanctions on Belarus to include firms and business people seen as backing Alexander Lukashenko's regime, the bloc's foreign policy chief Josep Borrell said Thursday. The targeting of businesses "will affect normal economic activity" in the country, and was decided after previous sanctions on Lukashenko and senior officials failed to halt repression against protesters, Borrell told a news conference. EU foreign ministers, meeting by videoconference, decided as a result "to proceed with the preparation of the next round of sanctions as a response to the brutality of the authorities and in support for the democratic rights of the Belarusian people." "These sanctions should go not only to the individuals, but also to institutions and entrepreneurs and firms," Borrell said, adding that a full review of EU-Belarus relations was also under way. EU member states would propose targets for the economic sanctions, he said. The next meeting of EU foreign ministers is to take place on December 7. "Member states consider that there is no positive sign at all from the Lukashenko regime, which continues refusing to engage in any kind of discussion with the European Union or to receive any mission from the OSCE," Borrell said, referring to the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe. "And so in these conditions, the European Union has to react, using the tools that we have. Sanctions are one of these tools." The EU is stepping up its action against Lukashenko and his regime as Belarusian security forces, many in plainclothes, arrest, harass and intimidate opposition activists and protesters demonstrating against August 9 presidential elections widely seen as fraudulent. A week ago, a 31-year-old opposition activist, Roman Bondarenko, died after being savagely beaten in detention. The previous EU sanctions targeted Lukashenko, his son and 53 officials. Borrell said the EU soon "will exhaust the number of people that could be sanctioned" in the regime, prompting it to look at businesses. The measures to be applied against businesses and businesspeople supporting Lukashenko's regime would likely go in the same direction as the previous ones, barring named individuals and entities from obtaining EU visas and freezing their assets in the European bloc. "Believe me, these kind of things are very much taken into consideration by the incumbents, by the people who are being under these sanctions," Borrell said. The exiled leader of the Belarus opposition, Svetlana Tikhanovskaya, has repeatedly urged Europe to go further with its sanctions against Lukashenko's regime. rmb/dc/pma
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