EU Meetings
Dail Éireann — 2021-06-24
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Simon Coveney (FG), Cork South-Central

It is being enforced and all EU states are, as far as I am aware, complying with it fully. There is a challenge, though, which I raised, as did a number of others. While it is the appropriate action and the EU and EU leaders needed to respond robustly to an outrageous act of aviation piracy, which is how it has been described, cutting off Belarusian airlines and not allowing them into EU airspace or EU airlines into Belarusian airspace has created a consequence of isolation for Belarus, in that any international travel will now have to go east rather than west to get to the EU.
People may well have to fly to Moscow to be able to fly to the EU now. It is still the appropriate decision to take that position from an aviation perspective, to respond to what happened, but it has a consequence we need to think about in the medium term. The other very strong and robust sanctions are not only appropriate but will also be effective. The EU is likely to add further to those sanctions in the months ahead.

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Record URI: https://data.oireachtas.ie/akn/ie/debateRecord/dail/2021-06-24/debate/main
Retrieved: 2026-08-14T04:49:26+00:00
Sitting date: 2021-06-24