<h6><strong>Eduardo González</strong></h6> <h4><strong>The Minister of Foreign Affairs, José Manuel Albares, announced this Friday that the European Union will define this same day, publicly, the common position of the 27 Member States on the situation in Venezuela.</strong></h4> “We are following the situation in Venezuela very closely,” declared Albares before a group of journalists in Madrid. “Today, at the event in Caracas, Spain will not have any kind of representation, and neither will the rest of the countries of the European Union,” he assured. “In recent days we have increased all efforts to establish a common position of the European Union, and we continue working in these hours to redefine, in light of the new situation, a new common position,” continued Albares. “Everything indicates, I spoke this morning with the High Representative, Kaja Kallas, that this European position will be made public today, and that it will be, of course, the High Representative who will do so,” he added. Albares recalled that “Spain was the first country in the European Union to request the delivery of the minutes and, of course, we were very clear in pointing out that we were not going to give legitimacy to alleged results that were not verifiable and that institutions that had been official observers, such as the Carter Foundation or the United Nations itself, openly questioned.” “Therefore, we are going to follow the developments throughout this day and, of course, we have in mind the 350,000 Spaniards in Venezuela and the almost 200,000 Venezuelans who live in Spain,” added the minister. Regarding the statements of the Popular Party against the Government with regard to Venezuela, Albares assured that “Spain is leading the common position of the European Union.” “I would ask the PP to join the Government's position, which, by the way, is also the common position of the European Union: the search for a Venezuelan solution, among Venezuelans, genuinely Venezuelan, democratic, peaceful, so that a democratic transition in Venezuela can advance and so that the democratically expressed will of the Venezuelans can triumph. Caracas will be the scene this Friday of the inauguration of Nicolás Maduro as president of Venezuela. The Spanish Government has decided not to send any kind of representation to the inauguration, considering that it cannot give “legitimacy to supposed results that were not verifiable and that institutions that had been official observers, such as the Carter Foundation or the United Nations itself, openly questioned,” explained Albares. No other EU Member State will send representation to the ceremony, not even the ambassadors accredited in Caracas, in a coordinated action that aims to underline the lack of democratic legitimacy of the presidential elections of last July 28. The Spanish government was the one to propose this position, marking the path that the rest of the 27 EU member states unanimously followed. Since the elections held in July, the European Union has highlighted the irregularities of the electoral process, such as the absence of verifiable results and the criticism expressed by international organisations such as the Carter Foundation and the United Nations, which abstained from endorsing the result. Although the European agreement is not binding, it reflects the bloc's commitment to avoid any gesture that could be interpreted as a recognition of the act of investiture. This position was confirmed on 29 August at an informal meeting of foreign ministers in Brussels. The then EU High Representative, Josep Borrell, declared that Maduro would be considered a “de facto president, but without democratic legitimacy”, given the lack of transparency in the elections and the absence of independent verification of the results. On September 19, the European Parliament recognized opposition candidate Edmundo González Urrutia as president-elect, later awarding him the Sakharov Prize for freedom of conscience.
