Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro in Caracas on January 22, 2021. -

Matias Delacroix / AP / SIPA

New EU sanctions on Monday against 19 Venezuelan officials angered Caracas.

The Venezuelan parliament, dominated by the party of President Nicolas Maduro, on Tuesday asked the government to expel the ambassador of the European Union.

The National Assembly also approved an “agreement to reject” these sanctions and plans to “urge” the Head of State to “declare persona non grata the head of the diplomatic delegation” of the European Union, Isabel Brilhante Pedrosa.

The text, approved unanimously by the deputies, also calls for a revision of the agreement on the presence of the European representation in Caracas.

End of travel and asset freeze

The EU sanctioned officials of Nicolas Maduro's regime on Monday for their role in acts and decisions it said undermine democracy and the rule of law in Venezuela.

The decision, validated by the Foreign Ministers of the Twenty-Seven, brings the total number of officials and senior officials of the Maduro government sanctioned by the EU to 55.

For them, this entails a travel ban and the freezing of their assets in the territory of the Union.

Two deputies of the new National Assembly, "not democratically elected" according to the opposition, José Bernabé Gutierrez Parra, leader of the Accion Democratica party, and Jose Dionisio Brito Rodriguez, leader of the Primero Justicia party, are among the personalities sanctioned.

The EU also sanctioned Omar Jose Prieto, governor of the state of Zulia, the commander of the armed forces Remigio Ceballos Ichaso, and three officials of the Electoral Council, including its president Indira Maira Alfonzo Izaguirre.

A warning in January

The EU did not take Caracas by surprise.

It had indeed announced in January that it was ready to adopt additional targeted restrictive measures, given the deterioration of the situation in Venezuela following the legislative elections of December 2020. At the end of this poll, boycotted by the main parties opposition and whose results were not recognized by the United States, the European Union and several Latin American countries, President Maduro's party and its allies won 256 of the 277 seats in the Assembly national.

In addition, on July 29, 2020, after a previous round of European sanctions, Nicolas Maduro declared persona non grata Isabel Brilhante Pedrosa and gave her 72 hours to leave the country.

However, when the deadline expired, the government had backed down, while asking the EU for "gestures" in return.

This time, the Venezuelan government announced for Wednesday a meeting of its Minister of Foreign Affairs, Jorge Arreaza, with Isabel Brilhante Pedrosa as well as with the Ambassador of France, Romain Nadal, and diplomatic representatives of Germany, the 'Spain and the Netherlands.

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