The EU needs to adopt a more pragmatic policy towards Belarus based on cooperation rather than sanctions.

The EU’s sanction regime against Belarus and the government of President Alexander Lukashenka has been in place for more than 16 years. In an abridged version of a brief originally published by the European Union Institute for Security Studies, Ondrej Ditrych writes that while the sanctions illustrate the EU’s objections to the regime in Belarus, all the available evidence has shown that they have been largely ineffective in their objective of changing the political climate in the country. He argues that the best way to make sanctions effective may be to terminate them, and instead establish a roadmap for engagement with the country that makes EU assistance and cooperation conditional on positive reform.