EU leaders agree on Belarus sanctions and to ban flights from country’s airspace
- EU leaders urged all EU-based carriers to avoid flying over Belarus, and called for an investigation from the International Civil Aviation Organisation
- Belarus authorities arrested Roman Protasevich - an activist, journalist and prominent Alexander Lukashenko critic - on Sunday
The European Union agreed on Monday to impose sanctions against Belarus, including banning its airlines from using the airspace and airports of the 27-nation bloc, amid fury over the forced diversion of a passenger jet to arrest an opposition journalist.
In what EU leaders have called a brazen “hijacking” of the Ryanair plane flying from Greece to Lithuania on Sunday, they also demanded the immediate release of the journalist, Roman Protasevich, a key foe of authoritarian Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko.
In their unusually swift action in Brussels, the EU leaders also urged all EU-based carriers to avoid flying over Belarus, decided to impose sanctions on officials linked to Sunday’s flight diversion, and urged the International Civil Aviation Organisation to start an investigation into what they see as an unprecedented move and what some said amounted to state terrorism or piracy.
The leaders called on their council “to adopt the necessary measures to ban overflight of EU airspace by Belarusian airlines and prevent access to EU airports of flights operated by such airlines.”
The text was endorsed quickly by the leaders who were determined to respond with a “strong reaction” to the incident because of the “serious endangering of aviation safety and passengers on board by Belarusian authorities,” according to an EU official with direct knowledge of the discussions who was not authorised to speak publicly about the private talks.