EU-Belarus people-to-people contacts

The autocratic policies pursued by Belarus's long-standing president, Alexander Lukashenko, have strained EU-Belarus ties over the years. Against this backdrop, the EU has geared all its programmes towards benefiting the Belarusian people at large. EU-Belarus relations did slowly begin to recover in the wake of the Ukraine crisis, but the backbone of EU-Belarus cooperation remains civil society support and people-to-people contacts.