Sense and Sensibility or The European Union and Venezuelan corruption



Beginning in mid August Venezuela will lose the preferential access it has to the European Union based on the Generalised System of Preferences (SPG +). That was just now announced at the German Parliament (Bundestag) upon request from the Ecologist Party. The Venezuelan government, in spite of its promises, had not ratified the United Nations Convention against Corruption. The European Union has thus decided to take back its decision from 9 December 2008 of adding Venezuela to the list of countries benefiting from the SPG +. Gabon, Nigeria and Pakistan also lost their preferential tariffs. The EU does not want to publish the decision about Venezuela in its official journal due to "reasons of political sensibility".

I wonder if the EU is afraid Chávez "freezes" commercial ties with it as he did with Colombia when Bogotá presented proofs Swedish weapons sold to Venezuela ended up in the hands of terrorist organisation FARC.

You can find the official sources (also with the words I put in red here) in the portal of the German Parliament (Bundestag) in German here (if you want to double check, try Google language tools)

Hat off Hans