On the European and World Day against the Death Penalty, High Representative of the EU for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy Federica Mogherini and Council of Europe Secretary General Thorbjørn Jagland urged Belarus to establish a moratorium on the death penalty.
This would be "a decisive step to bringing the country closer to pan-European legal standards", they state in a joint press release. Mogherini and Jagland also "call on all European states to ratify the protocols to the European Convention on Human Rights which prohibit the death penalty".
The high representative and secretary general state that "reintroduction of the death penalty by any member state would be contrary to the fundamental values and obligations underlying both organisations" (the Council of Europe and the EU) – although Turkey could reintroduce the death penalty.
More generally, Mogherini and Jagland encourage countries that still use the death penalty to establish without delay a moratorium on executions, and to commute remaining death sentences to prison terms. "All those countries remain in any event bound by international law and must thus refrain, inter alia, from carrying out executions on minors, on persons with mental illness or intellectual disabilities, or in cases other than for the most serious crimes", they add. (Original version in French by Camille-Cerise Gessant)