MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Venezuelan FM criticizes EU's decision to extend sanctions on gov't leaders

The EU wants “to torpedo the democratic party next Sunday,” Plasencia claimed

Venezuela's Foreign Minister Félix Plasencia Thursday criticized the European Union's decision to uphold sanctions against over 50 officials of the Nicolás Maduro administration ahead of Sunday's elections.

 

Plasencia said through his Twitter account that the EU “repeats its erratic and failed policy directed against the Venezuelan people by renewing, from the shadows, some Unilateral Coercive Measures contrary to international legality.”

 

The minister labelled these diplomatic actions as “an insolence” that would seek to harm the regional and municipal elections.

The EU Council decided on Nov. 15 to extend individual sanctions to 55 officials active or linked to the Nicolás Maduro administration until November 2022, due to their contribution to undermining Venezuelan democracy or harming the population's human rights.

The decision signed by Slovenia's Zdravko Počivalšek indicates that after the review made by that EU body, it was ordered to maintain the measures against these Venezuelans and to modify the explanatory statements against 26 people included in the list.

“These measures do not affect the general population and can be reversed in the light of progress towards the restoration of democracy, the rule of law and respect for human rights in Venezuela,” says the EU resolution.

Plasencia condemned this action and considered it “an act of hostility” that seeks to “torpedo” the regional and local elections that will be held this Sunday, November 21, in the Caribbean country.

“From Venezuela, we strongly condemn this new aggression against our people and we consider this insolent renewal an act of hostility, whose objective seems to want to torpedo the democratic party next Sunday,” he wrote.

The sanctions first applied in 2017 including Executive Vice President Delcy Rodríguez; the vice president of the United Socialist Party of Venezuela (PSUV) Diosdado Cabello; the Minister of the Interior and Justice, Remigio Ceballos, and other government officials and lawmakers.

In February 2021, 19 other people were added to the list, to which Caracas replied through a statement urging the EU “to cease its systematic aggression against the Venezuelan people and abandon, once and for all, the neocolonial vestiges and pretensions in their approach to Latin America.”