The Diplomat
The Group of the European People’s Party has informed Tuesday that it will not participate in the observation mission that the European Union will send to the upcoming municipal and regional elections in Venezuela, considering that the presence of a delegation of the European Parliament can be understood as a “whitewashing of the cruel regime” of Nicolas Maduro, reports Europa Press.
The European ‘populares’ were already very critical of the project of the High Representative for Foreign Policy of the EU, Josep Borrell, to send a European mission to the elections of 21 November, more after leaking an internal report of the European External Action Service that advised against the mission for considering it counterproductive.
In spite of everything, the EPP group was counting on proposing several of its MEPs as candidates for the mission, specifically Leopoldo López Gil, Javier Zarzalejos and Rosa Estarás, according to parliamentary sources consulted by Europa Press a week ago.
The mission was pending approval this week by the European Parliament’s Foreign Affairs Committee. Now, the President of the EPP in the European Parliament, Manfred Weber, and the head of the PP delegation, Dolors Montserrat, have issued a joint statement to explain that their group “does not want to contribute with its presence to the EU mission being interpreted as a whitewashing of the cruel regime that has seized power in Venezuela”.
The delegation of MEPs, which will carry out verification tasks in the days leading up to the vote and give political weight to a technical mission deployed weeks earlier, was to be made up of 12 members: three Popular, three Socialists, two Liberals and one member each from the Greens, the left, the Conservatives and the far-right. The Portuguese Socialist, Isabel Santos, has already been confirmed as head of the mission.
