The European Council agreed on Thursday not to recognise the “legitimacy” of Nicolás Maduro as Venezuela’s president-elect following last month’s elections, announced Josep Borrell, the European Union’s High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Affairs, who said Maduro will remain “de facto president”.
“We have been asking for the minutes again and again, but a month later there is no hope that Maduro will present the minutes, it is too late to continue asking for them,” Borrell said after a meeting of EU foreign ministers.
“Given that there are no records, that there is no verification and that we believe that there will never be any, we cannot accept the legitimacy of Maduro as president-elect. The Council decided that Maduro has no democratic legitimacy as president, he will remain as de facto president, but we deny democratic legitimacy based on a result that cannot be verified,” he continued.
Borrell acknowledged that Thursday’s decision will not have immediate practical consequences, as the EU has not imposed sanctions over the elections.
However, he said the move was a “firm statement” by the EU, which represents some 450 million people.
The European Council is the EU institution that defines the general political directions and priorities of the European Union.
One month after Maduro was declared the winner of the presidential election, Venezuela’s National Electoral Council (CNE) has not published the results in detail despite repeated requests from the international community for independent verification.
The opposition, for its part, published copies of the minutes kept by its witnesses at the voting centers on a website and which would confirm the victory of the presidential candidate, Edmundo González Urrutia, a 75-year-old retired ambassador who was supported by María Corina Machado, winner of the opposition presidential primary, but disqualified from holding public office.
González Urrutia participated this Thursday by videoconference in a meeting of EU foreign ministers to present an overview of the situation in the country.
Before the meeting, Spanish Foreign Minister José Manuel Albares had said that given the evidence that Maduro’s government has “no desire” to disclose the minutes of the presidential elections of July 28, his country would ask the EU to evaluate “what to do” so that the democratic will of Venezuelans “triumphs.”
González Urrutia has not appeared in two summons from the prosecutor’s office investigating him for publishing the minutes that the authorities consider “usurpation of functions”, arguing that he does not have the necessary guarantees and that the attorney general “has repeatedly behaved like a political accuser.”
The candidate was summoned to testify for the third time before the Public Prosecutor’s Office, but Machado said he would not attend the summons, because the country has a “totalitarian” system.
In 2013, the ruling party published digital copies of its voting records following the presidential election in which Maduro narrowly won over former candidate Henrique Capriles, without any legal action being taken.
Dozens of countries have condemned a ruling by the Electoral Chamber of the Supreme Court of Justice that upheld the election results, following an appeal filed by Maduro, which according to legal experts does not exist in the Venezuelan legal framework.
The preliminary report of the UN Panel of Electoral Experts, which was initially intended to be confidential and was finally published, stated that the electoral authority’s management of results did not comply with the “basic requirements of transparency and integrity” essential to hold credible elections. The Maduro government said that the document is “riddled with lies.”
The election results sparked protests that in some cases ended in violence and vandalism, leaving 27 dead and some 2,400 arrested.
The government accuses the opposition of having promoted acts of violence, while the opposition maintains that it is seeking to impose a narrative to justify arbitrary arrests, forced disappearances and intimidation against dissidents.
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