EU support for Belarusian academia drawn into political fray

Calls for Belarus to be expelled from an EU partnership programme could imperil university funding

EU support for academics in Belarus could be hit by sanctions being considered by the bloc. The penalties would be in response to the Belarusian state’s actions around the recent presidential election, which incumbent president Alexander Lukashenko claims to have won in an 80 per cent landslide.

On 17 August, the leaders of the major political groups in the European Parliament released a joint statement saying that the election on 9 August was “neither free, nor fair”, echoing criticisms made by EU foreign ministers in a videoconference on 14 August.