The European Council adopted Council Decision (CFSP) 2025/2040 imposing further restrictive measures on Belarus in view of its involvement in Russia’s aggression against Ukraine, including expanded export restrictions and additional controls targeting financial-sector software and services. The measures expand the lists of items that could contribute to Belarus’s military and technological enhancement, its defence and security sector, or the enhancement of industrial capacities. They further restrict the provision to Belarus and specified Belarus-linked public and private recipients of software with certain uses in the banking and financial sector, as well as services that contribute to enhancing Belarus’s technological capacities, and introduce a competent-authority prior authorisation requirement for other services not already covered by the restrictive measures in Decision 2012/642/CFSP. The Decision also imposes restrictions on providing crypto-asset services and certain payment services, and on issuing electronic money to Belarusian nationals, people residing in Belarus, and Belarus-established entities, while adding exemptions for humanitarian purposes, certain pharmaceutical, medical, agricultural and food products, access to proceedings in a Member State, and the recognition or enforcement of Member State judgments or arbitration awards. In addition, it extends the prohibition on purchasing, importing or transferring certain items intended to help Belarus diversify its revenue sources to all acyclic hydrocarbons. Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Iceland, Liechtenstein, Montenegro, North Macedonia, Norway and Ukraine aligned themselves with the Decision and committed to ensure their national policies conform to it.

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