Victorine: Parliamentary elections in Belarus to be litmus test for EU

For the EU, the 2016 parliamentary elections in Belarus will be a litmus test. The Head of the EU Delegation in Russia Andrea Victorine said so in an interview with the portal tut.by.

"Everyone in the EU will follow very closely the parliamentary elections ... We hope to see progress in the implementation of the OSCE ODIHR recommendations and expect that elections will be fair and will be held in accordance with international standards," said Victorine.

According to her, the recent lifting of sanctions against the official Minsk "is a certain credit of trust for Belarus." At the same time Brussels expects "movement in the right direction in the areas of human rights and the rule of law." "We want to see Belarus closer to Europe," said the head of the EU delegation.

Andrea Viktorine said that Belarus and the EU had agreed on 29 measures for rapprochement. But this is an internal document, the contents of which were not disclosed.