Ukraine

In view of the now official new allegations against Julia Tymoshenko and the declaration of the Ukrainian Prosecutor General's Office, the judgment of the European Court of Human Rights can under no circumstances lead to release for the former Interior Minister Yuri Lutsenko, currently in prison and suffering from life-threatening illness. Rebecca Harms, Co-President of the Greens/EFA group in the European Parliament, and Werner Schulz, Green member of the Foreign Affairs Committee, call on the European Commission to issue an immediate reaction and come to a rapid decision on sanctions against the government of Ukraine.

"After prominent EU leaders made headlines through the Euro 2012, with a more or less symbolic boycott of the football matches, they are currently relegated to being passive viewers of politically tainted justice. The new charges that have been brought against Tymoshenko, the ruthlessness towards the terminally-ill Yuri Lutsenko and the way in which the Ukrainian Prosecutor General's Office reacted to the judgment from Strasbourg, must have consequences. President Yanukovych and the Azarov government's strategy of dealing with political rivals by arresting and imposing long prison sentences on important opposition politicians must not be tolerated. Should this continue, the next parliamentary elections should not be accepted as being free and democratic. The international agreements currently under discussion with the WTO and the EU must be frozen. Other possible sanctions include measures such as travel bans on those who seek to undermine Ukraine's democratic development for their own political benefit.

The EU must also be forthright in demanding immediate clarification regarding the circumstances in which the environmentalist Vladimir Gonscharenko died. The information available so far suggests that he died from the effects of a brutal attack."