The European Union has closed its airspace to Belarusian planes

The countries of the European Union reached an agreement on Friday ban Belarusian airlines and their planes from flying over airspace of the States of the Community, as well as prevent the flights they operate from accessing their airports.

“The Council decided today strengthen existing restrictive measures given the situation in Belarus by introducing a ban on overflight of EU airspace and access to EU airports by Belarusian companies of all kinds, ”the institution said in a statement.

So, he says, EU member states must refuse permission to land, take off or overfly their territory to any aircraft operated by Belarusian airlines, including as a marketing company.

The decision adopted by the ambassadors of the 27 will be published this Friday in the “Official Journal” of the EU, in order to seize “in effect at 12:00 a.m. on June 5», They specified Efe community sources.

The twenty-seven ambassadors to the European institutions, under the Portuguese presidency of the EU, thus adopted the “legal acts“Necessary in a”Record time“To implement this decision, which was included in the conclusions of the summit of heads of state and government held in person in Brussels on May 24 and 25, the sources added.

In this way, they pointed out, “it was possible to translate legally, in record time, one of the priority elements of the conclusions of the European Council and perhaps the one with the most political impact in BelarusIn response to the decision of the regime of Alexandr Lukashenko to force a Ryanair plane to crash at Minsk airport on May 23 to arrest critical journalist Roman Protasevich and his partner.

The sources added that “work on the other aspects of the European Council conclusions is progressing at a steady pace», Referring to the sanctions to come.

At the last summit, heads of state and government also agreed expand the list of sanctions against Belarus, including President Lukashenko and his son and adviser Víktor Lukashenko, who are banned from entering EU territory and all their property and assets in the EU have been frozen.

Although the names and new entities have not yet transcended, Brussels said all would be linked to the plane’s forced landing and the arrest of the journalist and opponent Protasevich and his companion, Russian citizen Sofía Sapega..

In addition, EU executive freezes € 3,000m loan to Belarus “until it is a democratic country”.

Since the end of May, only Chinese and Russian airlines fly over Belarus, according to the FlightRadar24 flight tracking service.

Among the companies that decided on their own to avoid Belarusian airspace were Air France, Austrian Airlines, Lufthansa, Swiss, Finnair, Iberia, Polish LOT, Air Baltic, KLM and Ryanair itself. .

Ukraine has suspended all flights between the two countries and banned its airlines from crossing Belarusian airspace, despite the fact that Kiev airport will lose 10% of its revenue thanks to the measure.

Belarusian Belavia in turn announced the cancellation of flights to a dozen countries, including Spain, due to the closure of the airspace by the EU for the company.

Russia has become Belarus’ sole support in its latest confrontation with the West.

(With information from EFE)

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