22/02/2022 (Agence Europe) – On Tuesday 22 February, the Council of Europe’s Venice Commission published an interim opinion on the amendments to the Belarusian constitutional reform that will be submitted to a referendum vote scheduled for 27 February. This highly critical opinion, which was requested as a matter of urgency by the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe, notes that the amendments “fail to correct the strong imbalance of powers which already exists under the current Constitution and indeed may even aggravate it”. Experts on constitutional law have denounced a “strong risk” that the referendum “will be used as a means to provide legitimacy for authoritarian tendencies”. The amendments allow the current President to “remain at the centre of the State power”, his personal position seems “to be even further strengthened” and “the new qualifications for Presidential candidates would effectively exclude opponents abroad from the electoral process”, they added. More information can be found at: https://aeur.eu/f/FL (VL)