2023-07-17 21:56:00
(CNN) — The Vice President of Venezuela, Delcy Rodríguez, received special permission to travel to Brussels this Monday and participate in an international meeting between the European Union and the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (Celac), as CNN was able to establish.
Rodríguez landed in the capital of Belgium this Saturday, according to show a video posted on his official Twitter account along with the message “On behalf of President Nicolás Maduro we have arrived in Brussels to participate in the Third EU-CELAC Summit.”
The vice president is one of multiple Venezuelan officials who were sanctioned by the European Union in 2018, following a disputed presidential election in which Maduro was re-elected to a second six-year term in office, under highly controversial conditions.
The sanctions once morest Rodríguez and the other Venezuelan officials — accused of human rights violations and undermining democracy in the Latin American country — include a travel ban and an asset freeze.
A European Union official told CNN that Rodríguez’s entry was due to “an exception to the visa ban for the summit, which is possible under Article 6 of Council Decision (CFSP) 2017/2074.”
The EU had previously described the 2018 elections as “neither free nor fair, and their result lacked credibility as the electoral process did not ensure the necessary guarantees for them to be inclusive and democratic.”
The opposition leader of Venezuela, Juan Guaidó, criticized Rodríguez’s participation in the EU-CELAC meeting, when tweeting: “This reception of those who torture, imprison and who just last week insulted the EU is the revictimization of an entire society that still resists and seeks solutions. All this while the president’s visit is censored [de Ucrania] Volodymyr Zelensky. This impunity only favors dictatorships.”
In the EU-CELAC plenary session, Rodríguez will hold talks with the presidents Alberto Fernández of Argentina, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva of Brazil, Gustavo Petro of Colombia and Emmanuel Macron of France, together with the representative of the Venezuelan opposition Gerardo Blyde, to restart negotiations between the Venezuelan government and the country’s opposition before next year’s presidential election, according to an opposition representative who asked not to be named because he was not allowed to discuss the matter publicly.
Last month, María Corina Machado, a prominent opposition leader and primary frontrunner for the pro-democracy front, was barred from running for office by a Maduro-aligned court.
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