The European Union welcomes the decision of the Guatemalan President Alvaro Colom, who on Friday, 14 March 2008, vetoed a bill that could have reinstated capital punishment by giving the president the power to commute death penalty sentences in Guatemala. If the bill were to enter into force, it would effectively represent the ending of the de facto moratorium on the death penalty, which has been in place in Guatemala since 2000. The European Union considers the decision of president Colom as a highly positive development.
The UN General Assembly resolution on a Moratorium on the use of the death penalty, which Guatemala supported in December 2007, explicitly calls upon Member States that have abolished the death penalty not to reintroduce it. This call clearly also refers to States with moratoria on the use of the death penalty, that they should similarly not reverse their stance by reintroducing the use of the death penalty.
The European Union expresses the expectations that Guatemalan lawmakers would not override president Colom's decision with a two-thirds supermajority.
The Candidate Countries Croatia* and the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia*, the Countries of the Stabilisation and Association Process and potential candidates Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina and Serbia, and the EFTA countries Iceland, Liechtenstein and Norway, members of the European Economic Area, as well as Ukraine, the Republic of Moldova, Armenia and Georgia align themselves with this declaration.
* Croatia and the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia continue to be part of the Stabilisation and Association Process.
