One month after the presidential elections in Venezuela, the European Union has run out of patience with Caracas: faced with the Venezuelan government’s repeated refusal to present all the records to independently verify its self-proclaimed victory, the Twenty-Seven decided on Thursday not to recognise Nicolás Maduro as president-elect, as Spain had requested, considering that he lacks “democratic legitimacy”.
“We cannot accept Maduro’s legitimacy as president-elect, the Council has decided that he does not have democratic legitimacy as president,” announced the EU High Representative for Foreign Policy, Josep Borrell, at the end of the informal meeting of foreign ministers in Brussels, where they spoke, by videoconference, with the opposition candidate, Edmundo González.
Maduro “will continue to be de facto president, but we deny him democratic legitimacy based on results that cannot be verified,” Borrell insisted. The hardened position is the line pursued by Spain, which has been pushing for some time to not recognise Maduro’s victory, although the EU has so far limited itself to rejecting the results presented by Caracas.
In their latest joint statement, issued last Saturday, the Twenty-Seven had described Caracas’s judicial endorsements of the election results as “insufficient” and warned that “only complete and independently verifiable results will be accepted and recognised, to ensure that the will of the Venezuelan people is respected.” But Spain, supported by Borrell, wanted to go further and make it clear that the election results would no longer be accepted in any way, a step that has now been taken.
“More than enough time has passed requesting the minutes and we have to face the evidence that these minutes are not going to be presented. There is no will to present them, and therefore, to verify them,” declared the Minister of Foreign Affairs, José Manuel Albares, at the beginning of the meeting in the Belgian capital. “It is too late for that,” Borrell later confirmed.
Spain had requested that Venezuela be included in the agenda of the first meeting of European foreign ministers since the summer break and, therefore, of the Venezuelan elections. Albares arrived at the meeting urging the search for “tools” to achieve the objective of “a peaceful solution between Venezuelans, genuinely Venezuelan, that is not imposed from abroad and that allows for a negotiation between the Government and the opposition with the objective that Spain has of having the democratically expressed will of the Venezuelans triumph,” he added.
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Although the possibility of imposing sanctions was discussed, according to Foreign Affairs sources, in the end there was no agreement on this, as Borrell confirmed.
“The reality is that we have 55 Venezuelan political figures already sanctioned, including the vice president who is now Minister of Petroleum. [Delcy Rodríguez] and the now Minister of the Interior [Diosdado Cabello]“More personal sanctions would imply going directly to sanction the top political leaders, and there are only two or three who are not sanctioned,” he added, referring to Maduro himself. Hence, the States “have thought it was better to see how events develop” from the decision taken now not to recognize Maduro as the legitimate elected president.
At the meeting in Brussels, the recognition of Edmundo González as president-elect was also ruled out, in a similar way to what was done at the time with the opposition leader Juan Guaidó, despite the fact that in their last joint declaration, the Twenty-Seven stated that, “according to the public copies of the minutes, Edmundo González Urrutia appears to be the winner of the presidential elections by a significant majority.”
“That is not the common position of the EU at this time,” Albares said, calling for “intelligent action” and avoiding “grandiose phrases that could be very effective for 24 hours, but very ineffective in achieving a definitive Venezuelan solution.” For Spain, the possibility raised by Brazil of repeating elections is also nothing more than an “intellectual hypothesis,” given that, he recalled, “both the opposition and the Government rule it out,” so “it is not an option at this time,” he added.
“The most important thing is that we achieve dialogue, that negotiation, that the Government and the opposition can sit down together. That has to be the first step (…). We have to reflect very clearly on how the EU should position itself,” Albares had urged. In this sense, the Twenty-Seven also advocate intensifying dialogue with regional actors, especially with Brazil and Colombia, and doing everything possible to preserve the physical integrity and civil and political rights of the members of the opposition.
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