The General Court of the EU confirmed the European sanctions against the Belarusian state-owned airspace enterprise Belaeronavigatsia, in a judgment delivered on Wednesday 15 February (T-536/21).
Due to the democratic and human rights situation in Belarus, the EU had adopted sanctions targeting persons, entities or bodies close to the Belarusian leadership (notably Regulation 2022/300 and EU Council Decision CFSP 2022/307).
The company Belaeronavigatsia is challenging, before the General Court, its inclusion, in June 2021, on the lists of persons and entities subject to EU sanctions because of its responsibility for the diversion, in May 2021, of flight FR4978 to Minsk airport, which led to the arrest of the journalist and opposition figure Raman Pratassevitch and Sofia Sapega (see EUROPE 12745/1).
Invited to interpret for the first time the concept of “person responsible for the repression” in the context of the restrictive measures adopted by the EU because of the situation in Belarus, the General Court rejects in its entirety the action based on two pleas alleging an error of assessment and a breach of the principle of proportionality.
According to the European Court, Belaeronavigatsia could not reasonably have been unaware, given the political context in Belarus at the time, that its activities in diverting flight FR4978 to Minsk, for reasons unrelated to aviation safety, contributed to the repression of civil society and democratic opposition.
Consequently, the EU Council, without committing an error of assessment and basing itself on a sufficiently concrete body of evidence, considered that, through its involvement in the rerouting of the said flight, the applicant was responsible for the repression of civil society and the democratic opposition in Belarus.
See the judgment: https://aeur.eu/f/5cj (Original version in French by Mathieu Bion)