Dobesedni zapisi razprav

Četrtek, 8. februar 2024 - Strasbourg

12.4. Dodatno zatiranje demokratičnih sil v Venezueli: napadi na predsedniško kandidatko Mario Corino Machado (RC-B9-0097/2024)

Declarações de voto orais

  Clare Daly (The Left). – Mr President, I voted against this file because the situation in Venezuela is very volatile and the EU should stop the situation from escalating rather than engaging in geopolitical games.

I mean, let’s remember, Venezuela’s GDP has shrunk 80 % in ten years, forcing 7 million people to flee that country. It’s a disaster humanly, economically and societally. And former US Secretary of State Pompeo boasted that this was what US sanctions had resulted in, a humanitarian crisis, he said, that was increasing by the hour. He seemed to revel in the fact that it was increasing pain and suffering to the Venezuelan people, and the Biden administration is continuing on with these sanctions.

The Venezuelan government had reached an agreement that has now broken down, showing how weak trust is. Against that backdrop, the decision of the US to reimpose sanctions is really dangerous. We should be concentrating on a diplomatic resolution of the conflict in Venezuela.

  Mick Wallace (The Left). – Mr President, do I think that there’s a healthy democracy in Venezuela? I actually don’t, you know, but I don’t see one anywhere else, either.

As my colleague said, over 7 million people have left Venezuela because of the illegal sanctions that have been strangling the country to death since 2017. The Centre for Economic and Policy Research found that in the two years before Trump further tightened the sanctions in 2019, they had killed 40 000 people.

The text not only ignores the carnage the sanctions are causing, but calls for more sanctions, this text today. It blames everything on the Government. But have we any humanity? I mean, we actually have blood on our hands. We introduce sanctions to kill the ordinary people. Sanctions hurt the most vulnerable the most, not the leaders and the wealthy in the country. The most vulnerable and women and children suffer more.

Our idea of sanctions is to get the people to bring about regime change. Well, we’ve a terrible way of doing it. You say we want free elections in Venezuela, but the Venezuelan people have been under relentless collective punishment. We’re not going to get a normal election result.

Why doesn’t the European Union abandon their like-minded US partner and have a healthy approach to Venezuela and help them to get on their feet? I don’t understand the reason.

  Presidente. – Terminaram as declarações de voto orais de hoje.