BERLIN (Reuters) – The European Union must impose sanctions on Belarus in response to a crackdown on opposition protests and the measures should also target President Alexander Lukashenko, the leader of the bloc’s largest political grouping said on Wednesday.

“Europe must quickly agree on a list of sanctions. And from my point of view, it should include Lukashenko, the head of this system,” Manfred Weber, a senior German conservative and head of the centre-right European People’s Party in the EU Parliament, told German public broadcaster ZDF.

EU diplomats told Reuters earlier this week that the EU aims to impose economic sanctions on 31 senior Belarus officials, including the interior minister, by mid-September in response to an election that is widely seen as rigged.

(Reporting by Michael Nienaber, editing by Thomas Escritt)

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