Why Western world leaders want to talk to Maduro again

A turning point in Venezuela. After more than a year of stagnation, the opposition and the regime of President Nicolás Maduro were sitting together again at the table. This included a large humanitarian aid package, which will be overseen by the United Nations.

Maduro has been an international pariah for many years. No wonder, because under his rule Venezuela ended up in a deep economic and political crisis, which caused millions of refugees. But the tide seems to be turning.

The United States is now, not for the first time, lifting a series of sanctions against the country. And at the climate summit in Egypt, prominent world leaders like French President Emmanuel Macron and Portuguese Prime Minister António Costa again showed caution towards Maduro. What is happening?

Back to top. Under President Maduro’s regime, Venezuela has been suffering from an economic and humanitarian crisis for years. Half of Venezuelans live in poverty, it turns out recent studies. And there are regular shortages of food and medicine.

Furthermore, Maduro is internationally criticized for his authoritarian leadership style. This was reflected, for example, in the 2018 presidential elections. A section of the opposition boycotted those elections, because they believed that the electoral system was unfair. Most international observers agreed with them. The inevitable happened: Maduro received the majority of votes and declared himself the winner.

A few days later, opposition leader Juan Guaidó declared himself interim president of Venezuela. According to him, the elections were invalid, so the president of the parliament – Guaidó himself – should assume presidential duties. More than fifty countries have recognized Guaidó as a legitimate ruler, including the Netherlands and the United States. But Maduro kept his leg up and actually continued to wield power.

The United States and the European Union have been pursuing a strict policy of sanctions against Venezuela for years, which makes the economic situation even more dire. This contributes to the already unprecedented exodus that is taking place in the country: almost 7 million Venezuelans have now fled the country. In neighboring Colombia, in the United States. And to Spain, which welcomes the largest number of Venezuelan migrants in Europe. Madrid is now known as “little Venezuela”.

Even if the Venezuelans of Madrid miss their homeland, they still don’t think about going back:

All reasons why Venezuela and the West aren’t best friends, to say the least. But Venezuela has something that especially European countries urgently need after the war in Ukraine: large quantities of fossil fuels. The country has the largest oil reserves in the world and, after the United States, the largest gas reserves in the Americas.

Maduro is aware of this. “Venezuela is ready to fulfill its role in providing the energy market with the oil and gas that the global economy needs in a stable and secure manner,” the club of oil exporting countries.

He hopes for fewer sanctions in exchange for energy deals. But the West also wants the regime to sit down with the opposition to organize fair elections.

Refugee opposition members and other critics of the Madrid regime are divided on whether to speak to Maduro again. “It will be yet another conversation, and so far without results,” says Miguel Henrique Otero, editor-in-chief of the Venezuelan newspaper The national team. He was forced to close his newspaper in Venezuela and now runs it from Spain.

“I don’t think Maduro will restore freedom of the press and release political prisoners,” he said. “These are the conditions for fair elections. The bottom line is that we will be disappointed and that the 2024 election will be another corrupt election that Maduro will win.”

Former Venezuelan Energy Minister Humberto Calderón Berti sees the Western search for new fuel suppliers as an opportunity to break through the political process. “With a different government, Venezuela could be a reliable supplier of oil and gas to the international market, as we have been for 50 years,” he says.

Doing business with Venezuela is not without consequences. For example, a new flow of petrodollars will flow to the Maduro regime. And the question is whether it is actually possible to hold truly safe and fair elections in a country that has been held in the grip of the same rulers for more than two decades.

Furthermore, it remains to be seen how much oil and gas the country will be able to extract from the ground in the near term. Due to mismanagement, corruption and international sanctions, the energy industry in Venezuela is in bad shape. At the turn of the century, more than three million barrels of oil were being extracted a day, but now they are only 700,000.

The West wants international energy companies to restore production in Venezuela. Venezuela should therefore once again become an important long-term energy supplier. But it could take years.