Venezuela declares economic state of emergency again

Venezuela's government has once again declared a 60-day economic state of emergency, effective August 8, 2026. This decree, published in Official Gazette No. 7066, Extraordinaria, can be extended for another 60 days. The Supreme Court swiftly issued ruling No. 824, confirming the measure's legality and constitutionality.

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From 1999 onwards, time and again, sometimes using the most futile and false justifications, the Chávez and Maduro regime has disregarded the powers that laws grant to the Legislative Branch in these matters and has granted itself extraordinary powers in financial, administrative, and tax issues.

This recurring declaration, however, has become a predictable pattern since 1999. The article contends that the governments of Hugo Chávez and Nicolás Maduro have consistently disregarded the legislative branch's constitutional powers regarding financial, administrative, and tax matters. Instead, they have granted themselves extraordinary authority through unilateral, opaque, and arbitrary decrees.

These emergency measures have historically been justified by promises to protect the national currency, curb inflation, prevent speculation, boost national production, ensure supply, and foster private sector partnerships. Yet, the article asserts these objectives have remained unfulfilled. The net result, according to the text, is the systematic impoverishment of Venezuelan society.

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These measures have always been taken with purposes that have not been fulfilled: protecting the value of the national currency, avoiding inflation and speculative practices, stimulating and guaranteeing national production, ensuring supply, and initiating promising phases of agreements with the private production sector to improve the quality of life for workers and their families.

The constitution, approved in December 1999, already contained provisions for states of exception (Articles 337-339) that critics say reflected Chávez's desire to govern without checks and balances. The permanent state of economic emergency is presented not as an exceptional measure but as a systemic feature of the current governance model. The article cites the "Enabling Laws" period from 1999 to 2012, during which nearly 13 years of decrees altered laws on land ownership, taxation, banking, and hydrocarbons, significantly increasing state intervention.

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From that moment on, almost permanently, the regime has governed by unilateral, unconsulted, arbitrary, and opaque decrees that appropriate the functions of the rest of the public powers to concentrate a perverse amount of functions and decisions in the Executive Branch, whose net result is undeniable: the systematic and constant impoverishment of Venezuelan society in every corner of the territory.