The Poland-Belarus LBT agreement was ready to be launched back in early 2011. However, Belarus delays the start of the long-awaited agreement until now. This paper examines the bilateral agreement and explains the reasons for Belarus’ reluctance to launch it.
After approval by the legislative organs and the signature of the president in 2010, the Belarusian side stopped short of taking the final necessaty step, namely sending a diplomatic note indicating readiness to launch the agreement. At first, the Belarusian side came up with apparently legitimate reasons for delaying the Polish LBTR. Subsequently, it became clear that the actual rationale was not petty technical issues, but a mixture of political and economic reasons.
This Andrei Yeliseyeu‘s research was produced within the project realized by the EAST Center in partnership with the Belarusian House in Warsaw.
To download the research paper Local border traffic between Belarus and Poland: benefits, challenges and prospects (In Russian).
To read the earlier Andrei Yeliseyeu’s report for the Finnish Institute of International Affairs on the topic of LBT agreement: Keeping the Door ajar: Local border traffic regimes on the EU’s eastern borders (in English)
