Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2012-03-14-Speech-3-561-000"
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"en.20120314.28.3-561-000"2
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"Mr President, Commissioner, I have four children. When one of my children gets angry with another, that second one always goes off to join a third. Why does he go off? It is because he has somewhere to go. Europe’s relations with Belarus can actually be compared to relations between children. If we are not careful, we may send Belarus away from Europe altogether, because it has somewhere to go. Where is that? It is Russia, where, in recent years, democratic expression has decreased, not increased.
If we should like Belarus to get closer to Europe, then we must act very carefully and wisely. We must use both the carrot and the stick. The carrot would be not to reduce but to increase economic cooperation with Belarus. Through economic cooperation, we will achieve a situation where a section of the people become wealthier, and a prosperous class will be created. We can see that throughout North Africa, and in Russia itself, it is, in fact, the middle class, the affluent middle class, that demands democratic change in a country. The stick must be political sanctions, which, of course, maintain the requirements for the Belarus Government to respect human rights. Thank you for your attention."@en1
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