On Thursday 7 June, the conference of presidents of the political groups at the European Parliament is expected to decide to send a parliamentary mission of a dozen or so MEPs at the end of June to assess the impact of the Venezuelan humanitarian crisis on two of its bordering countries – Colombia and Brazil.
The goal of the European Parliament, whose president Antonio Tajani is particularly active on this issue, is to consider the Venezuelan political and economic crisis in its regional dimension.
The idea of sending such a delegation came to Tajani after his meeting in Strasbourg with Venezuela's former general prosecutor Luisa Ortega Díaz back in March. Ortega Díaz fled her country under accusations of betrayal by the Maduro regime. Tajani also mentioned a European Parliament delegation visit to Venezuela's borders with Colombia and Brazil when he hosted Colombia's outgoing President Juan Manuel Santos Calderón in Brussels last week (see EUROPE 12030).
The leaders of the European Parliament's delegations to the Euro-Latin American Parliamentary Assembly (EuroLat), Ramón Jáuregui Atondo (S&D, Spain), for relations with Mercosur, Francisco Assis (S&D, Portugal), for relations with the Andean Community, Luis de Grandes Pascual (EPP, Spain), and for relations with Brazil, Fernando Ruas (EPP, Portugal), support such a European Parliament delegation being sent to the Colombian border city of Cúcuta and the Brazilian border city of Boa Vista.
In a letter sent to Tajani on 19 April, they underline the importance of sending this delegation after the presidential elections are held in Colombia (second round on 17 June) and Venezuela (see EUROPE 12028) so that the European Parliament is not accused of "interference" in the two countries' domestic affairs.
The presence of over 1.6 million Venezuelans in Colombia is a theme of the Colombian presidential campaign and is an additional difficulty in a country where bringing about peace between the government and the FARC is not without its challenges.
At the end of March, European Commissioner for Humanitarian Aid Christos Stylianides announced new EU financial assistance for the inflows of Venezuelan refugees to Colombia when he was visiting Cúcuta (see EUROPE 11984).
The Venezuelan crisis is also having a strong impact on the Caribbean islands, as the presence of Venezuelans in Aruba and Curaçao, two territories dependent on the Netherlands, equates to 10% of the local population. (Original version in French by Mathieu Bion)