Europe’s Last Chance HOW THE EU CAN (AND SHOULD) BECOME THE INDISPENSABLE ACTOR IN VENEZUELA’S DEMOCRATIC RESTORATION Ryan C. Berg and Jorge González-Gallarza MARCH 2021 AMERICAN ENTERPRISE INSTITUTE Executive Summary uropean leaders often claim to care about the went unanswered. In February, the ex post addition Efate of freedom, democracy, and human rights in of 19 new human rights violators and electoral fraud- the world. Yet, their foreign policy choices occasion- sters to the EU’s still paltry list of 55 sanctioned indi- ally ignore it—and rarely is that misalignment starker viduals was a step in the right direction, but it also than in European Union policy toward Venezuela. highlighted the cognitive dissonance in EU policy. The country’s rapid descent into chaos has reached a Given the bloc’s continued reticence to fully recog- juncture in which policy substance will matter much nize Juan Guaidó as the interim president of Venezu- more than rhetoric in a foreign policy challenge that ela, these additional sanctions are morally atonal. If risks slipping into an insoluble morass. The stated the EU draws the line only at election rigging, then agenda of renewed multilateral engagement by the the Maduro regime can get away with plenty—wholly Joe Biden administration offers a chance to convince unsanctioned and unchecked. the EU to change course and become the indispens- Furthermore, Borrell’s exercise manifested a larger able actor in Venezuela’s struggle to restore democ- strategic flaw in the EU’s thinking on Venezuela that racy. This report endeavors to show how the EU can requires serious redress: Maduro is not a typical trop- seize this opportunity. ical dictator. He is singularly focused on preserving The United States has challenged Venezuelan dic- his grip on power, attracting to his inner circle a bur- tator Nicolás Maduro’s grip on power with a “maxi- geoning cast of crony characters who have grown the mum pressure” campaign of individual and sectoral Venezuelan state’s stake in narco-trafficking, illicit sanctions, erecting an architecture meant to prevent networks, money laundering, and the systematic loot- the consolidation of his dictatorship, curtail the crim- ing of state coffers. Rather than speak the soft lan- inal networks he has deeply embedded in state insti- guage of diplomacy, Maduro is more likely to respond tutions, and eventually usher in a political transition to pressure and clear demands for reform. through overwhelming economic pressure. Venezuela under Maduro, moreover, represents an The EU, for its part, justified its sanctions skittish- overlooked security threat to the EU, which otherwise ness and its naive hope that the regime could be made musters vast resources to combat narcotics traffick- to cede power through brokered talks by alleging an ing, malign foreign influence and money launder- aversion to inflict pain on Venezuelan citizens. Per- ing, and support Colombia’s delicate peace process, haps a cogent rationale for a time, the bloc’s evolving which Maduro is scuttling by supplying a safe haven stance over recent months has oscillated between a to the dissident Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de commitment to democratic revival and appeasement. Colombia (FARC-D). In themselves, these concerns Exhibit A—the latest and clearest example of the should impel the bloc, committed as it is to promot- EU’s Venezuela policy gone awry—was the sham leg- ing democratic standards worldwide and holding islative election of December 6, 2020, which Josep human rights abusers accountable, to meet Venezu- Borrell flirted with monitoring in exchange for a few, ela’s degeneration into full-fledged, consolidated dic- largely defensive concessions. Maduro’s refusal to tatorship with a marked turn from its current foreign permit neutral international observers to hold him policy trajectory. The EU needs to leverage its strate- accountable for his electoral machinations meant the gic weight to bring about free and fair elections and EU foreign policy chief’s modest basket of demands eventually a democratic transition with the utmost i EUROPE’S LAST CHANCE RYAN C. BERG AND JORGE GONZÁLEZ-GALLARZA urgency while stepping up its long record of human- US, having permitted unrelated disagreements itarian efforts to assist Venezuelans in need and the to cloud its recognition of its strategic interest exile communities to which they keep fleeing in in a free, prosperous, and democratic Venezuela. record numbers. This report outlines a multipronged approach to • The Nicolas Maduro regime’s illicit invest- achieve those goals. After surveying the EU’s pres- ment schemes have found fertile ground in the ent arsenal of policies and arguing that it is unlikely EU at large, with a particular hotspot in Spain. to contribute meaningfully to a political transition or A torrent of investments and acquisitions has protect human rights, the report unpacks the under- allowed corrupt cronies in Maduro’s entou- appreciated security threat that Venezuela poses to rage to engage in unfathomable kleptocracy and the EU and its member states. It then outlines the stash their ill-gotten gains in the Eurozone, viti- importance of multilateralism in solving difficult ating the rule of law in the process. foreign policy challenges, especially those in which sanctions play a leading role, thereby highlighting • The EU consistently underappreciates the the potential complementarity of stepped-up EU Maduro regime’s multi-faceted security threat, sanctions and pressure to ongoing US enforcement which intersects with and compounds many of efforts. The report closes by outlining eight realistic the EU’s greatest geostrategic challenges in the and achievable recommendations for the EU and the post-COVID-19 landscape. China, Cuba, Iran, US to bring their policies closer to a common trans- and Russia are all at once strategic rivals of the atlantic approach, thereby affording both a higher EU and enablers of the Maduro regime’s threat likelihood to play an effective role in a political transi- to its security. tion in Venezuela. • The Joe Biden administration’s commitment to multilateral engagement on Venezuela offers the Key Points EU a chance to reclaim transatlantic cooperation and present a common vision for political tran- sition in the country. Beefing up sanctions and • The European Union’s (EU) current policy developing a coordination mechanism, as well as approach toward Venezuela is insufficient to drumming up humanitarian aid, would consti- contribute meaningfully to a political transition tute serious progress and potentially thrust the in the country and protect human rights. Often- EU into the role of indispensable actor in Vene- times, the EU’s policy has been at odds with the zuela’s democratic restoration. 1 Europe’s Last Chance HOW THE EU CAN (AND SHOULD) BECOME THE INDISPENSABLE ACTOR IN VENEZUELA’S DEMOCRATIC RESTORATION Ryan C. Berg and Jorge González-Gallarza uropean integration is the story of EU mem- popular mandate through elections to the European Eber states coordinating on policy and delegating Parliament. Intergovernmentalism, on the other power to supranational institutions. Although a late- hand, relies on the multilateral cooperation of dem- comer, foreign policy has been no exception to this ocratically elected national governments, through trend. While the management of the bloc’s internal heads of state at the EU Council. Entrusting the inter- market was delegated early in the process of European governmental EU Council with designing and exe- integration, political interactions vis-à-vis the outer cuting the EU’s foreign policy rested on not only the world remained exclusively the province of member imperative of having a single forum for bloc-wide states until the Treaty on the European Union (TEU) nimble decision-making but also the notion that came into force in November 1993. near-unanimous buy-in was necessary to flesh out a The TEU established the EU’s so-called Common coherent and credible foreign policy that all member Foreign and Security Policy, a framework underpin- states could support.2 This was done at meetings of ning the bloc’s every interaction with the world in both the EU Council and its so-called foreign affairs defense, security, diplomacy, trade, and development configuration—namely, the monthly gathering of aid, among other areas. From early on, the locus of member state foreign ministers. decision-making was the EU Council, a body created in However, a diverging trend has been at work 1975 to host the gatherings of EU heads of state and gov- through further revisions to the foreign policy pow- ernment that previously took place under a different ers delegated by the TEU—through the Treaty of name. Yet increasingly, much of what goes into defin- Amsterdam of 1997, which sought to streamline ing the EU’s strategic outlook is decided elsewhere in decision-making further by introducing constructive the bloc’s sprawling institutional maze, outside that abstention and replacing absolute majorities with cloister of accountable member state governments. qualified majority voting at the EU Council, and the Some context as to how this happened is in order. 2003 Treaty of Nice, which made the process more From the onset of the European project with the effective in other ways. The result has been an EU European Coal and Steel Community of 1952, Euro- foreign policy increasingly designed and carried out pean integration has evolved along two separate away from the intergovernmental spotlight of the EU tracks.1 Supranationalism defines the creation of Council, by a high-level political office—theso-called new bureaucracies to dictate EU policy, long a wholly High Representative of the Union for Foreign Affairs opaque and unaccountable phenomenon but increas- and Security Policy (HR)—and its attendant diplo- ingly based, since the Treaty of Lisbon of 2009, on a matic corps, the European External Action Service 2 EUROPE’S LAST CHANCE RYAN C.