European Union High Representative for Foreign Affairs Josep Borrell. Photo: Oliver Hoslet/EFE/File photo.
Members of the European Parliament (MEPs) from Spain’s right-wing Popular Party (PP) asked the high representative of the European Union for Foreign Affairs, Josep Borrell, not to allow the lifting of EU-imposed illegal sanctions on Venezuela. Their demand was in response to a request made last month by Spanish Foreign Minister José Manuel Albares, who had asked the European Union to review its unilateral coercive measures against Venezuela.
In a letter to Borrell, the far-right MEPs argued that in order to lift the sanctions, the EU must wait for the application of the agreement reached in Barbados between the government of Venezuela and the opposition. For the far-right PP parliamentarians Francisco Millán Mon, Leopoldo López Gil, Gabriel Mato and José Manuel García-Margallo, some of the signatories of the letter, the process of guaranteeing “free and fair” elections in Venezuela “will be long and complex.”
“The process has barely shown signs of having begun and will require, among other things, the full freedom to participate as a candidate for all those who wish to do so, including María Corina Machado,” the PP letter highlighted, despite Venezuelan authorities’ recurrent statements asserting that the far-right Venezuelan politician will not be granted new pardons, nor will the political ban against her be lifted. In fact, this was not even a point of discussion in the Barbados Agreement to which the MEPs referred.
The PP MEPs demanded that before the EU takes steps to lift the illegal sanctions, both parties (Venezuelan government and opposition) must recognize and respect “the right of each political sector to select their candidate for the presidential elections freely and in accordance with the internal mechanisms.”
Venezuelan political experts consider this as a move aligned with Washington that intends to connect sanctions lifting with disqualification of political candidates, something that the Venezuelan government has discarded on multiple occasions as it is not included in the agreements signed recently in Barbados.
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Doubts
However, the EU has stated that it is waiting for the agreements signed in Barbados to be fulfilled and applied in their entirety before it decides to review the sanctions on Venezuela.
In October, at the meeting of the EU Foreign Affairs Council in Luxembourg, Spanish Minister of Foreign Affairs José Manuel Albares urged the EU to review the sanctions imposed by the bloc on Venezuela.
“I have urged my colleagues to raise the need to review the EU sanctions on Venezuela, in line with recent US decisions, and given the positive evolution of the dialogue among Venezuelans,” Albares had said after that meeting.
The next meeting of the EU Foreign Affairs Council is scheduled for November 13. If Albares’ proposal is not accepted, the sanctions against Venezuela will be automatically renewed on November 14. Europe, just like the US, is in desperate need of energy sources ahead of the upcoming winter season. Europe is in a greater need of alternative sources of fuel as it sanctioned Russia, which used to be the EU’s main supplier of oil and gas.
(RedRadioVE) by Milena Bravo, with Orinoco Tribune content
Translation: Orinoco Tribune
OT/JRE/SC
