The Diplomat The Venezuelan government has informed the Spanish Senate that it will not allow the entry into the country of an institutional delegation that the Upper House was considering sending on the occasion of next Sunday's presidential elections, given that it has not received an express invitation to observe the elections. This is stated in a note verbale sent by the Venezuelan Embassy in Madrid to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, to which Europa Press had access. The note, dated 17 July, states that the Accompaniment Programme for the presidential elections designed by the National Electoral Council (CNE) does not envisage ‘an international monitoring mission’ by the Spanish Senate. For this reason, it warns that ‘in the event that parliamentary representatives attempt to violate the electoral rules of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela by trying to enter Venezuelan territory without being part of the aforementioned Electoral Accompaniment Programme, they will be inadmissible’. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs had sent a note verbale to the embassy on 4 July, in which the Senate's Bureau ‘expresses its favourable disposition to the participation of an independent electoral observation mission to attend the presidential elections’, as stated in the embassy's notification. The sending of this delegation, the composition of which was not finalised, but which, a priori, was to include at least members of the PP and PSOE, and which it is not clear at the moment that it will be maintained, was the result of an invitation made by the opposition leader María Corina Machado on 10 June. Specifically, she invited the members of the Ibero-American Affairs Committee to be ‘witnesses’ to the elections, after Maduro had revoked the authorisation for the deployment of an EU observation mission. The PP maintains its delegation On the other hand, according to Europa Press, the PP is going ahead with its plans to send a delegation to Venezuela to accompany the opposition in these elections after having received an invitation to do so from Machado and the opposition candidate for the presidential elections, Edmundo González. This delegation, as announced last week by its spokesman in Congress, Miguel Tellado, will be made up of himself, the deputy spokeswoman in Congress, Cayetana Álvarez de Toledo, the group's secretary general, Macarena Montesinos, and the spokeswoman in the Foreign Affairs Committee, Belén Hoyo. ‘We will be there to show our support and all our backing’ to the opposition, “carefully observing the course of the elections together with the rest of the international community and unreservedly denouncing any infringement, any authoritarian movement”, said Tellado, who pointed out that the PP had received an express invitation from the opposition candidate, Edmundo González, and opposition leader María Corina Machado. The European People's Party (EPP) has also announced that it will send an ‘electoral accompaniment delegation’ to Caracas this weekend, made up of Spanish MEPs Esteban González Pons, Vice-President of the EPP and elected Vice-President of the European Parliament in the new legislature, and Gabriel Mato, as well as Portuguese MEP Sebastiao Bugalho. Although the letter from the Venezuelan Embassy only mentions the Senate delegation, its warning could be extended to these other two representations, since in neither case have they received an invitation from the CNE to observe the presidential elections. Diplomatic sources have pointed out that, despite the fact that Spaniards do not need visas to travel to Venezuela for tourism, this would not be the case, which is why they could be expelled as they do not comply with the country's migration regulations. They have also indicated that the Venezuelan authorities have not processed any visas. In February 2019, the government of Nicolás Maduro proceeded to expel a delegation of five EPP MEPs who travelled to Caracas at the invitation of the Venezuelan National Assembly then chaired by Juan Guaidó, who was recognised by the European Parliament as president in charge of Venezuela. They were then sent back on the plane in which they had arrived. They included both Pons and Mato.
