Brazilian diplomats have all but guaranteed that Venezuela’s grievances against the US will be a central theme of the EU-CELAC summit, calling it a “natural topic” that will “clearly… come up.” Ambassador Gisela Padovan noted that the Venezuelan delegation itself will “bring it up,” but her comments imply they will be speaking to a very receptive audience.
That audience is being prepared by Brazil and the host nation, Colombia. Brazil’s President Lula is attending the summit for the express purpose of showing “regional solidarity with Venezuela” against US President Donald Trump’s military threats. This provides a powerful, high-level endorsement for the Venezuelan position.
The summit’s host, Colombian President Gustavo Petro, has created an even more fertile ground for this discussion. He is in the midst of his own furious condemnation of a separate US operation that has killed over 60 people. His “extrajudicial executions” charge has already established a deeply anti-interventionist tone for the meeting.
Into this receptive atmosphere, the Venezuelan delegation will introduce its “natural topic.” The combination of Petro’s outrage over the boat strikes and Lula’s solidarity with Venezuela will effectively merge the two issues into one powerful, unified regional critique of US military policy.
This has left the summit’s official EU-backed agenda, the “Declaration of Santa Marta” on energy and technology, with no political oxygen. The European delegation, missing its top leaders, is powerless to stop the agenda from being rewritten by this powerful new Latin American consensus.