Following a stream of questions about Belarus foreign policy that we continue to receive from our website visitors abroad, we are pleased to offer our brief responses. The answer to your question may already be covered below as we consolidated the bulk of inquires into a set of the most frequently asked questions.

If you have a question in mind about our foreign policy, you are welcome to pose it. The most interesting, sort of conceptual, nontrivial questions are especially encouraged.

Please note that all questions are subject to scrutiny. Personal requests or any forms of abusive language will not be tolerated. Click here to proceed.

How will you live in future if you are intent on not choosing between Russia or EU?
Belarus will not choose between closer relationships with the EU or Russia. Our foreign policy seeks to harmonize these relationships as they complement each other and benefit our development and security.

Our strategic ally and main supplier of energy resources, including gas and oil, Russia is continually our major trade partner, making almost half of the Belarusian trade turnover. Strongly connected with the Russian economy, Belarus needs, and will need, a vast Russian market to sustain our export potential.

The EU is the second-largest market for our economy after Russia, with over 30 per cent of our trade turnover. At the same time, it is our largest export market (45 per cent in 2008) and our largest investor accounting for some 40 per cent of all inward investments. Austria, Germany, Switzerland and the UK constitute a major investing pool in the Belarusian economy.

It is important to remember, however, that apart from pure economy Belarus and the EU share quite a few important challenges that require both sides to rise to those challenges jointly: energy supply, transit, security, illegal migration, organized crime, human trafficking and many other threats.

We also support closer EU-Belarus-Russia co-operation as we need to deal with numerous cross-border issues like energy transit, trade, technology transfer, etc. Particularly, we believe that opportunities for such trilateral co-operation could be considered through relevant projects within the EU Eastern Partnership programme.

What do you expect from the EU Eastern Partnership?
The Eastern Partnership is a promising initiative designed to encourage closer co-operation between the EU and six former Soviet nations, including Belarus. We welcome that and are seeking to engage in project activities on a wide range of issues – energy, transit, security and more.

However, our standpoint of principle is that to become a genuine success the Eastern Partnership should be a project-oriented programme. We insist that co-operation within the Eastern Partnership must not be directed against any country whatsoever and provoke competition over “spheres of influence” in our region. On the contrary, we do support engagement of other countries in relevant projects.

Why are Belarus' visa requirements still so restrictive towards European citizens?
We think that our visa requirements towards European nationals are not restrictive, with currently no need for a formal invitation if a citizen from a Schengen zone comes to Belarus for not more than 30 days that makes the procedure of getting a visa easier. We also offer a very cheap visa fee of just 10 Euros for the EU nationals visiting Belarus in a group of five or more people (tourist or business groups).

Besides, this is Belarus that spearheads effort to facilitate travel in the near-borders areas with three neighbouring EU countries of Latvia, Lithuania and Poland, with formal intergovernmental agreements to follow shortly.

However, we may gladly go further and consider an option of abolishing visas for European countries if they wish to do likewise. We have visa-free regimes with the Commonwealth of Independent States, and a visa-free regime with Israel is being discussed.

At the same time, we are not pleased with quite burdensome procedural requirements for our citizens to get a Schengen visa, with weighty paper work, lengthy consideration of applications and a visa fee which is almost two times higher for Belarusians than for Russians or Ukrainians.

These and other issues on how to make visa procedures easier for both Belarus and European citizens continue to be negotiated with our European colleagues.

For information about the ways of getting a visa to Belarus and visa requirements click here.

Did the global economic crisis hit Belarus and what did you do to address its impact?
An open economy with a large dependence on exports, Belarus was hit by the crisis due to the reduced demand on foreign markets. However, as many other countries, we took efforts to help mitigate the crisis’ impact. They sought to encourage economic activities through a set of liberalisation measures in business operation, tax regime, trade, construction and other areas to see more incentives and less regulations (take a closer look at a set of liberalisation measures here).

To help keep our sustainable economic development, we also use foreign loans, including a $2 billion loan from the International Monetary Fund, and continue to work hard to ensure our goods have access to foreign markets.

Do you have attractive proposals for foreign investors?
With a World Bank-given status of one of the top self‐reforming countries, Belarus is an increasing hub for foreign investments. Belarus is a manufacturing economy, with hundreds of high-profile enterprises in virtually every economic sector, well-developed R&D complex, skilled labour and talented engineering corps. A member of the Eurasian Economic Community, Belarus is also a gateway to the combined market of 200 million people of the customs union formed by Belarus, Russia and Kazakhstan that may potentially engage more ex-Soviet countries.

All that, plus more opportunities to run business more smoothly with a set of serious liberalisation measures in place, gives an investor a good incentive to come to Belarus and reap economic benefits.

For now, Belarus is a home for a number of successful businesses with foreign investments. To mention just the most prominent ones, these would be Heineken, Telekom Austria, Raiffeizen Bank, Olvi. The list is growing on, with a number of world brands and smaller companies wishing to settle here.

There is a vast panoply of business project areas from machine-building, petrochemical industry, optics, IT, nanotechnologies, agriculture to food-processing, transportation and logistics, banking, real estate, etc.