EU Mulls New Venezuela Sanctions, With Many Endorsing Guaido

France says Guaido can organize new elections

Following the lead of the Trump Administration, a number of European Union member nations have endorsed Venezuela’s opposition leader Juan Guaido as the country’s head of state. As with the US, this is leading Venezuela to revise bilateral ties with them.

France went a step further, saying that not only are they endorsing Guaido, but that they believe Guaido has every right to organize and hold new elections himself to replace President Maduro.

Actions union-wide are still coming, however, with officials saying that a meeting of EU foreign ministers is discussing a new round of sanctions against the Maduro government. They say the sanctions are focused on individuals within the government.

So far, they say the EU has had no discussions on sanctioning the Venezuelan oil industry the way the US has. Officials say they can’t exclude that, but aren’t directly pursuing that possibility right now.

Though the hope seems to be that they can force regime change through sanctions and diplomatic pressure, that historically hasn’t worked very well, and if anything had forced the public to be more reliant on the existing government.

Author: Jason Ditz

Jason Ditz is Senior Editor for Antiwar.com. He has 20 years of experience in foreign policy research and his work has appeared in The American Conservative, Responsible Statecraft, Forbes, Toronto Star, Minneapolis Star-Tribune, Providence Journal, Washington Times, and the Detroit Free Press.