EU will not recognise Venezuela election result until all votes counted, Borrell says

By Francesco Guarascio

HANOI (Reuters) -European Union foreign policy chief Josep Borrell said on Wednesday the bloc could not recognise Venezuela’s election result until all votes were counted and records provided, amid international concerns over the integrity of the vote.

The election authority in Venezuela said President Nicolas Maduro had won a third term in office on Sunday with 51% of the vote to extend a quarter-century of socialist rule, despite exit polls that pointed to an opposition win.

Borrell said the electoral commission had announced the vote results on the basis of 80% of ballots counted, while the Venezuelan opposition had published very different results.

“That is an additional reason for not recognising the results until they will be fully and independently verified,” he told reporters during a visit to Vietnam.

The members of the 27-nation bloc will decide on possible next steps only after the full results are made available, he added.

Protesters took to the streets in Venezuela on Tuesday, demanding that Maduro acknowledge he lost the election, as a major international observer concluded the vote was undemocratic.

The government denounced the demonstrations as an attempted coup.

The U.S.-based Carter Center, which observed the vote, said late on Tuesday the election could not be considered democratic as it “did not meet international standards of electoral integrity”.