Venezuela returns to the debate in the European Parliament and once again the Spanish Popular Party uses the institution to attack Pedro Sánchez. On this occasion, those of Alberto Núñez Feijóo accused the president of the government, whom they accused of “double standards” for not recognizing the opponent Edmundo González as president-elect. “One day he calls him a hero and 24 hours later he denies his status as president,” said the spokesperson, Dolors Montserrat.
The PP’s criticism comes on the same day that Foreign Minister José Manuel Albares received González. Sánchez himself also did so in Moncloa six days ago, after the opposition candidate arrived in Madrid on a Spanish armed forces plane after requesting political asylum.
The PP MEP took advantage of his intervention to also attack former president José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, who played a key role in negotiating this departure from Caracas, which came at the request of González himself. Montserrat called the former socialist leader a “launderer of dictators” and accused him of remaining “silent and hidden in the face of the greatest fraud in the history of Venezuela”. “Who knows for what dark interests”, he suggested. Zapatero, who has links with the Maduro government but also with the opposition, remained in the background so as not to harm the negotiations.
The debate on Venezuela was included in the agenda of the plenary session in Strasbourg at the request of several groups (EPP, Socialists, Liberals -PNV- and Patriots for Europe -Vox-) coinciding with the one that took place in Congress. The great conflict in the negotiation of the resolution that will be voted on Thursday is the recognition of Edmundo González as the winner of the elections of July 28 and even as the elected president of Venezuela, something that the European People’s Party and the extreme right are doing.
EPP, destined to reach agreement with the ultras
At the meeting on the possible joint resolution, the EPP referred to the recognition of González as president-elect as a “red line” and, when the socialists and liberals refused to take this step, the negotiation failed. Socialist sources explain that they agree with 95% of the text regarding the denunciation of the situation and the demand for transparency on the part of the Maduro government, but they doubt the “usefulness” of the European Parliament expressing itself in these terms at a time when no Member State – which is the one with powers in foreign policy – recognizes González’s victory.
Socialist MEP Javier Lopez accused the EPP of seeking the support of the extreme right “that has little faith in democracy” for a diplomatic issue that almost no country has used. ERC parliamentarian Diana Riba also accused the right of using Venezuela to “make profit”.
The pressure that the EU is currently exerting on the Venezuelan government is focused on transparency in the publication of the control reports and on the non-recognition of Maduro’s declared victory. All that EU foreign policy officials have said is that the signs point to an opposition victory.
The Commissioner for Equality, Helena Dalli, who is the one that the European Commission sent to the debate to replace the High Representative, Josep Borrell, who is in the Middle East, recalled that the 27 share an “unequivocal” position: “The absence of an independently verifiable voting history makes the EU unable to recognize the announced result. That is why we are not going to recognize the legitimacy of Maduro as a democratically elected president.”
The United States is also not willing to recognize the victory of the opposition candidate. Only Argentina, under Javier Milei, Ecuador, under Daniel Noboa, the president who indirectly decided on the unprecedented assault on the Mexican embassy in Quito; and Panama, under the conservative José Ramón Mulino, have recognized González as president-elect.
Once the negotiations of the “three large central groups” have exploded, the option that the EPP has to move forward with the resolution on Venezuela is to rely on the three extreme right groups in the vote that will take place on Thursday. It would not be the first time that a fracture has occurred in the European Parliament because of this Latin American country and it is not new that the Spanish right has taken advantage of a debate on Venezuela to attack the Sánchez government from Strasbourg, although it had already happened a second time since the start of the war in Ukraine.
