Belarus election

European official calls for new Belarus election with global supervision

The “best solution would be to replay the match under the control of the OSCE,” says the European Union’s foreign policy chief.

By MARI ECCLES

The EU’s foreign policy chief has called for a new election in Belarus under the supervision of the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe.

The “best solution would be to replay the match under the control of the OSCE,” Josep Borrell wrote in an opinion piece for French newspaper Journal du Dimanche.

“In the meantime, we can’t just express our worries; we need to sanction those who are responsible if the EU wants to be consistent,” he said.

French President Emmanuel Macron said on Friday that he had enlisted Russian President Vladimir Putin's help in convincing Alexander Lukashenko to accept mediation from the OSCE.

EU leaders have condemned the disputed Belarus election result. Lukashenko, who has been president since 1994, claimed he won 80 percent of the vote, causing Belarusians to hold mass protests that were violently suppressed by security forces. Opposition leader Svetlana Tikhanovskaya officially won 10 percent of the vote, but her backers say that in reality, she beat Lukashenko.

EU leaders also agreed to impose sanctions on a number of people responsible for violence against protesters and election fraud.

On Friday, Borrell repeated the line that the EU does not recognize the election result.

In his piece for Journal du Dimanche, he added that Moscow was “intending to prevent Europeans from providing help to civil society that’s revolted against rigged presidential elections.”