VENEZUELA has expelled the EU’s ambassador following Brussels’s imposition of new sanctions aimed at undermining its socialist government.

Isabel Brilhante Pedrosa was given 72 hours to leave the country on Wednesday.

Venezuelan Foreign Minister Jorge Arreaza said Caracas had no option but to respond given the EU’s “disrespect for international law.

“We do it because there are already 55 decisions — what [the US and EU] call sanctions — as if they had a moral authority, which they do not, to impose any punishments on citizens of another country,” he said.

The EU refused to send observers to Venezuela’s last parliamentary elections in December and claims the vote was illegitimate because some opposition parties boycotted it, though most took part. 

It imposed new sanctions this week despite the coronavirus pandemic. Mr Maduro said the EU would be welcome to return to Venezuela when it had become “respectful” of the country’s elected government. Until then “there will be no kind of dialogue, gentlemen of the European Union,” he said.

Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro said on Monday that US and EU sanctions had cost the government at least $30 billion (£21bn), affecting its ability to handle the pandemic.

But its socialist public distribution system and free healthcare have seen it handle coronavirus far more successfully than most other Latin American countries. Venezuela has lost 1,316 lives to Covid — a figure of 46.7 per million — compared with Ecuador’s 15,634 (899 per million), Colombia’s 59,260 (1,177 per million) or Brazil’s 249,957 (1,184.3 per million). By comparison Britain’s 121,516 confirmed deaths equate to 1,818 per million.