Representatives of the custom services of the European Union pointed out to the perspective of the Belarusian custom service proposal to introduce a system of preliminary information on goods and vehicles moved via the Belarusian border and borders of other European Union Member States.

The Head of the Commission on Political Matters of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe Andrea Rigoni came forward with an initiative regarding the reduction of the Schengen visa cost and on the simplification of visa procedures for the citizens of Belarus.

The website team received a letter from a reader with a very interesting question: where one should file a complaint when suffering from discrepancies regarding visa issues within the Schengen zone?

Belarus has imposed a fine of more than two months' average wages on a Baptist who "organised choir singing and conducted conversations on religious topics" outside Ushachi public market, Forum 18 News Service has learnt. After a plain clothes policeman told a group of Baptists from outside the area to stop, Vladimir Burshtyn replied that they were not disturbing public order and cited religious freedom guarantees in Belarus' Constitution and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. The fine is, to Forum 18's knowledge, the highest yet imposed on Baptists for unregistered religious activity. Higher fines have been imposed on members of other communities. Olga Karchevskaya, an official who witnessed the incident, defended the state's response and the Religion Law's restrictions because "we need to know who's coming to us - they could be destructive or acting against people's interests." In a separate incident, a Baptist congregation's worship in Osipovichi was interrupted by officials, and the congregation's deacon was fined about two week's average wages for leading an unregistered religious community.

A series of events collectively named National Days of Belgium will be held in Belarus in October 2009, Pascal Buffin, an officer at the Belgian embassy in Moscow, told BelaPAN.

Due to the data provided by the Ministry of Statistics and Analysis of the Republic of Belarus, 13,944 tourists visited Belarus in organized groups in January – March 2008, which constituted over three thousand tourists fewer compared with the previous year. The majority of tourists come to Belarus from Russia – 7,708 persons. Overall, there were 8,222 visitors from the CIS countries and 5,722 visitors from other foreign countries.

The first round of consultations between the Republic of Belarus and the European Commission in customs issues was held in Brussels on June 10, BelTA was told in the Foreign Ministry.