The Diplomat in Spain

Borrell in his meeting with Arreaza./ Photo: MAEC

The Diplomat. 18/07/2018

The Minister of Foreign Affairs, Josep Borrell, took advantage of the meeting of Foreign Ministers of Latin American and Caribbean States Community (CELAC) and the EU to confront the crises of the two Latin American countries whose situation is most worrisome for Spain and the EU: Venezuela and Nicaragua.

The crises of both countries were not in the agenda of the EU-CELAC meeting -focused in multilateralism, free trade against protectionism, climate change, the Agenda 2030 and women’s rights-, which did not prevent, as reported the spanish minister to the press, that the countries of the Lima group took advantage of the occasion to make «a harsh criticism of the regime” of Nicolás Maduro and that 13 Latin American countries jointly expressed their «concern» about the situation in Nicaragua.

The EU-CELAC meeting, held on Monday and Tuesday, concluded with a final declaration in which, without referring to any specific country, it is reaffirmed the “commitment to continue working together for further promotion of democracy, through free and fair elections; as well as the respect for the rule of law and the protection of all human rights and fundamental freedoms of all people», one third of the members of the United Nations, with almost 1,000 million inhabitants.

During the press conference following EU’s Council of Foreign Ministers, also held this Monday in Brussels, Borrell said that Spain «will not champion a ‘hard line’ of sanctions when there is a problem in Latin America». «We would not like to repeat the example of Cuba, when it was us who led the hard line», he added.

The Spanish minister met on the margins of the EU-CELAC with his Venezuelan counterpart, Jorge Arreaza, to whom he conveyed the EU’s deep concern about the situation in the country and expressed «the will of the Government of Spain to actively contribute to create the conditions for a democratic, peaceful and negotiated solution» to the aforementioned situation and «our intention to maintain, with such purpose, an open dialogue with government, opposition and the relevant international actors».

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EU-CELAC meeting called for human rights, democracy and free elections without mentioning any country

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Initially, the possibility had been announced that Borrell would meet in Brussels with Daniel Ortega’s Private Secretary for National Policies, Paul Oquist, with whom he would address the situation in Nicaragua, but finally the spanish minister’s bilateral meetings were limited to the one with Arreaza and with his counterparts of Chile, Uruguay and Bolivia, according to sources from the Ministry. Oquist met on July 6 in Madrid with the Secretary of State for International Cooperation and for Ibero-America, Juan Pablo de Laiglesia.

According to Borrell, all attendees at the EU-CELAC meeting, especially Germany, expressed concern about the situation in Nicaragua, whose situation, in the words of the minister, «is going from bad to worse”. In addition, the Nicaraguan government presented a proposal for the EU to mediate in the crisis of the Central American country, but «there is still no response», Borrell said.

The Spanish government claimed this Monday in a statement to investigate and judge all the deaths that occurred during the crisis in Nicaragua and demanded that «the rights of assembly, demonstration and freedom of expression must be respected”.