Ulad Vialichka: We have to stop in order to move forward

We should not expect a considerable breakthrough in relations between Belarus and Europe until the people interested in it will not consolidate their forces.

An accomplished visit to Minsk of Gunnar Wiegand, the director of the Department for Russia, Eastern Partnership, Central Asia, Regional Cooperation and the OSCE of the European External Action Service of the EU, received a consolidated stand of the National Platform of Civil Society on the development of the European dialogue on modernization (EDM).

“We have presented our opinion to the European Commission and it has already received certain feedback”, - said Ulad Vialichka, the Chairman of the Coordinating Committee of the National Platform of EaP CSF, in an interview with “EuroBelarus”.

In a zone of relations’ developing

Considering Wigand’s visit in the context of the upcoming summit of the Eastern Partnership and other issues related to some kind of progress in the EU policy at the Eastern Europe, Ulad Vialichka believes that “this visit may be regarded as an attempt to monitor the relationship between Belarus in Europe in general and how much they have developed. Also, this visit was useful in the light of the activation of the Belarusian Foreign Ministry diplomatic service, which has been actively looking for contacts with Europe within the last few months, though never promising anything.”

Moreover, we need to understand that it is the last year of the current European Commission mandate. Thus, it is absolutely natural that such EU programs as the Eastern Partnership and the EDM are a part of obligations of the current composition of the European Commission. According to Ulad Vialichka, it is now that the European External Action Service is trying to sum up the work of the Commission for the last several years gradually: “The forthcoming Eastern Partnership summit in Vilnius is one of the main political directions of the current European Commission. But next year the composition will change, new people will come and their predecessors will have to account for the work done. So report on Belarus should be a part of it.”

Contexts for common people

Responding to the question ‘What new can the visit of Gunnar Wiegand bring in the European Dialogue on modernization?’, Andrei Yahorau, the head of the Centre for European Transformation, said that “an important part of the visit was to clarify the working issues of EDM development with the coordinating group”, he also expressed the hope that the dialogue “will continue to develop in the direction of strengthening socio-political forces in Belarus”.

However, for a wing side spectator, who is not too involved in the details of Belarusian-European relations, it may seem that the Wiegand’s visit had little sense from the point of view of new twists and fundamental decisions. At the end of the two-day stay in Belarus a senior European official voiced the very same points to which the EU adheres with regard to our country. The official Minsk responded to it predictably enough and the members of political opposition and civil society have once again expressed their hopes and shared their assessments.

“In the context, that common people can see, the situation may look exactly like that”, - believes Vialichka. – At present the issue of the relations between Belarus and Europe has not received any additional factor that would make this visit significant of life-changing. Everything remained the same, everybody keeps to their own opinion. But this visit by definition could not revolutionize the Belarusian-European relations. The Wiegand’s visit was of a monitoring and working character.

Controversy over a number of issues

We also have to understand that there is a number of issues that do not belong to a high political level. “For example, the current composition of the European Commission in Minsk, as an embassy, has recently experienced an intense expansion process, the members have changed. It is all a part of their management activities aimed at solving problems exactly within the scope of such visits. This is a routine that is less interesting for wing side spectators, but it is an important point for the backroom of the European bureaucracy” notes Vialichka.

It is not by accident that the Coordinating Committee of the Belarusian National Platform of the Civil Society Forum of the Eastern Partnership (EaP CSF) has already expressed its concerns about the reasonability of the previously announced decisions regarding the third phase of the European dialogue on modernization with Belarusian society and they have stated their proposals.

According to Ulad Vialichka, the EDM, as an initiative proposed by the EU, has already gone through one and a half year of the development, and at this point we have to achieve certain goals. In particular, we had to arrange a dialogue inside our country, even without the participation of the official authorities.

“We could not make that”, says Vialichka, “so from our point of view, the proposals for the development of the initiative were not only constructive enough, but they were also contradictory. We felt it necessary to draw the attention of all the parties interested to fundamental issues connected with the European dialogue on modernization. Despite its pro-European orientation this program, without these fundamental principles, will simply lose its priority for the civil society.”

To correct mistakes

The representatives of the Coordinating Committee of the National Platform of EaP CSF in a cooperative statement expressed their readiness to a more detailed explanation of its position and specific proposals for dialogue with representatives of the European Commission, the EU Member States and also with all Belarusian stakeholders. The aim of the dialogue is to give the EDM a new dynamic that will enable it to achieve goals and objectives.

As Ulad Vialichka explained this position, “we should not look for the right answers to the wrong questions as the correct answer to the wrong question will not solve the problem. It is better to stop, to understand the difficulty of the dialogue and only then slowly and systematically move forward”.

Often the most obvious problem of the development of the EDM is thought to be the non-participation of the Belarusian official authorities in the dialogue. However, according to Vialichka, it is not that simple: “Non-participation on the dialogue is of course a problem. But the European dialogue did not have a claim on a quick solution to the problem of mutual understanding between the government and independent groups of Belarusian civil society. The primary objective of the dialogue was to establish links between these independent groups of the civil society, experts, stakeholders and the political opposition within the country. The matter is all the people who need reforms in Belarus, who really crave for it. Unfortunately, this basic cannot be solved because of a number of reasons. The main aim of the dialogue today is to fix the mistakes. So before a dialogue with the government and with Europe we need to humbly sit and our homework.”