On Monday 22 January, Belgium's Foreign Minister Didier Reynders again expressed concern about the situation in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), and called on the EU to put pressure on the new Kabila government for the elections to take place on 23 December 2018.
Reynders raised this point at the Foreign Affairs Council meeting in Brussels, but no further discussion ensued.
"On 31 December and in recent days there have been demonstrations with very violent crackdowns. I believe the European Union should remain very attentive to the situation, calling for the use of violence to be proportionate, so we do not have the escalation we have experienced recently, and (we must) monitor the situation so that there is real progress towards elections. There is an enormous job to exert pressure to ensure the holding of proper elections this year in the Democratic Republic of Congo", Reynders told the European press.
A few days earlier, in a resolution on human rights in the DRC, the European Parliament had also called on President Kabila and his government to ensure the holding of elections by the scheduled deadline, and it had called on the EU to subject any contribution to the electoral process to concrete measures from the government, showing political resolve to hold elections in December 2018, including the publication of a realistic election budget.
The MEPs also called on the Congolese authorities to release all political prisoners and to conduct an independent investigation into the violent crackdowns of the demonstrations of December 2017. (Original version in French by Aminata Niang)