Hello, I'm Paige and this is the Euro Intelligence podcast covering current affairs in the EU and Euro area.

I am joined by Wolfgang and Susanna, directors of Eurointelligence in Oxford.

Guys, this week we saw incredible scenes as President Lukashenko in Belarus sent a jet to intercept Orion Air Flight,

force a landing in Minsk, and detain a young journalist there.

European Council has responded with sanctions that are being branded as much stronger than

anticipated, showing that the bar was set quite low. Wolfgang, what's your take on the situation?

Given where they started, they did as much as they could have done. The bigger question is, and there are two related issue.

One is the regime's violations of human rights and its treatment of the journalists.

But the issue for the EU, the main issue for the EU, this is a security threat.

This was a plane that started and was supposed to land in the EU. This was

domestic flight, hijacked by another regime. The question that we've been asking in our briefing

today is a list, a slightly expanded list of economic sanctions, which have yet to be

flashed out, because that's not what the European Council does. It just passes the order.

Is this the appropriate response to a clear and present security threat?

And we've been, you know, we've been raising the question whether, you know, a threat

of that nature should not be responded to with, you know, with military means.

So that obviously was not on the agenda of the European Council,

nor is it incidentally on the agenda of any discussions or people,

or whenever there is a threat.

There are similarities to Turkey.

Turkey's, you know, you've written about it.

I mean, there are also violations of EU security interests.

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