MADRID- The European Parliament and the External Action Service of the European Union held a first meeting this Thursday to discuss the possible deployment of an electoral observation mission in Venezuela for the July 28 elections, in which Nicolás Maduro aspires to retain office until 2030, after 11 years as dictator of the Caribbean country.
The meeting in Strasbourg came after the exploratory mission that studied the conditions on the ground for two weeks, although it was not conclusive since the report of the electoral experts was not yet ready. In any case, the political groups were in favor of sending the mission, as explained by European parliamentary sources.
The EU High Representative for Foreign Policy, Josep Borrell, insisted on the need to be present at the elections and be able to monitor them from the ground, something that the opposition leader, María Corina Machado, winner of the primaries but disqualified, agreed with. by the regime’s Supreme Court, who requested that there could be international observers to “verify the reality of what happened” in the Latin American country.
An “exploratory” mission of European Union technicians evaluated the situation in Venezuela for two weeks to see if all the necessary conditions were met to send observers to the next presidential elections.
With the report produced by the technical mission, the High Representative will make a decision about sending observers to the elections, something he already did for the regional and municipal elections of November 2021, when the mission went ahead despite the fact that the previous report warned of the risk involved and the European People’s Party boycotted the initiative, leaving their positions in the mission vacant.
Furthermore, this mission ended abruptly when the Venezuelan regime denied the renewal of the team members’ visas, days after Maduro himself referred to them as a “delegation of spies.”
“Exploratory observation”
The European People’s Party showed its reservations about how the exploratory observation mission took place by denouncing that it met with Maduro and Manuel Rosales, but not with the main opposition leaders such as Machado, Corina Yoris, named his replacement, and Edmundo González Urrutia, who It will finally be the opposition’s bet in the face of obstacles to registering other candidates.
In a parliamentary question to Borrell, PP MEP Leopoldo López Gil asked him to clarify what was the criterion established by the Foreign Action Service to decide the meetings of the exploratory mission and whether he considers that political representation was “balanced.”
López Gil regretted that “the main task of the exploratory missions” was to listen to “all the political sectors of the country,” which is why he wondered if the report prepared by the technical mission could be “fair” if “it excluded in its interviews to the most representative legitimate opposition”.
Source: EUROPA PRES
