EU’s Unilateral Trade Liberalisation for Belarusian Services

This policy paper aims at offering a complementary solution to the European Union (EU) EUR 24 million assistance package to support good faith small and medium enterprises in Belarus by suggesting the introduction of unilateral trade liberalisation measures for the country’s services sector for 12 months, with prolongation conditional on the political and economic situation in Belarus. In consideration of the identified drawbacks of direct monetary assistance to Belarus, the author builds this paper on the EU’s experience in the Western Balkans to suggest potential political and economic rationales for the EU to unilaterally liberalise trade in services with Belarus. The paper identifies construction, transport, maintenance and repair, and ICT services as sectors with the highest untapped export potential for Belarusian services in the EU. The author did not find any legal limitations or negative implications under the legal frameworks of the EU, the Eurasian Economic Union, or the World Trade Organization.

“EU’s Unilateral Trade Liberalisation for Belarusian Services as a complementary solution for EU assistance to Belarus” is available under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license. Some rights reserved by Sierž Naūrodski, CASE – Center for Social and Economic Research and CASE Belarus – Center for Social and Economic Research.

The work has been created under the Polish Development Cooperation Programme, financed by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Poland in 2021 as part of the “Support for Democracy” programme. You may use the work freely, provided to you keep the above mentioned information, including the information on the license in use and the rights holders.