Turkish Airlines and FlyDubai could be banned in the EU for flying migrants to Belarus after an attack on the Polish border blew up into an international incident.
“The EU will … explore how to sanction, including through blacklisting, third-country airlines that are active in human trafficking,” EU Commission president Ursula von der Leyen said on Monday (8 November) after people tried to storm the Polish border earlier in the day.
Two top EU officials, Josep Borrell and Margaritis Schinas, will also travel to countries such as Armenia, Egypt, Iraq, Jordan, Lebanon, Turkey, and the United Arab Emirates to press them to stop people flying to Minsk, von der Leyen added.
Belarusian airline Belavia, which is already banned in the EU, is doing most of the “trafficking”.
But Minsk airport data showed on Tuesday that Turkey’s national flag-carrier, Turkish Airlines, which is popular with EU tourists, was still flying migrants from Constantinople to Minsk twice a day despite the border crisis.
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FlyDubai, an Emirati budget airline, and Syria’s Cham Wings were also flying people in.
Von der Leyen issued her threat after several hundred mostly Kurdish people tried to break through a razor-wire fence near the ‘Kuźnica’ crossing-point on the Belarus-Polish border.
Aerial video footage posted online showed them being forced to do it by armed Belarusian officers, some of them with attack dogs, and some of whom reportedly fired shots in the air behind the crowd, which included children.
Read more: EU Observer
