Belarusian president Alyaksandr Lukashenka has taken the opportunity to thank Commissioner for European Neighborhood Policy and Enlargement Negotiations Johannes Hahn in person for ‘normalising the relations between Belarus and the EU’.
The EU top official, who is visiting Belarus at the moment, met with Alyaksandr Lukashenka on June, 21.
According to Lukashenka, he always remembers the EU’s being Belarus’ neighbour.
“Neighbors are given by God, therefore we should be on friendly terms with them and promote partner relations. We took our time; we did not promise you the things we could not deliver. You were watching us closely; we were feeling the European Union out, too. Taking into consideration the ongoing transformations in Belarus and in the EU, we came to the conclusion that we should stop looking askance at each other while watching each other across the fence. We decided to make advances and restore friendly and partner relations,” the Belarusian leader said.
However, the president stressed that Belarus had never asked for EU membership. In his opinion, the Belarus-EU partnership should be based on trade and economic relations.
“Topics like democracy, freedom of speech, political prisoners, abolition of capital punishment are still on the agenda, we are not taking them off the table and we make no bones about it. However, the focus should be made on trade, economic and financial relations,” Lukashenka added.
