Government and Opposition Reach First Agreement: Supreme Court Overhaul, London Gold Recovery

After six days of talks in Caracas, the Rodríguez government and the Dinorah Figuera-led opposition delegation announced their first concrete agreements on August 13, 2026, in what Al Jazeera called the sharpest test yet of whether the US-backed process can produce results without María Corina Machado at the table. The two sides agreed to a fresh overhaul of the Supreme Tribunal of Justice (TSJ) — amending its organic law again, renewing and expanding the judicial nominations committee, and setting up a credentials-review council to replace all magistrates via a new nomination process, effectively restarting a Supreme Court restructuring that had begun in May and expanding the bench from 20 to 32 members. The parties also agreed to jointly pursue recovery of roughly 31 tonnes of Venezuelan gold (worth an estimated $4 billion) frozen at the Bank of England since 2018–2019, with recovered funds to be deposited in US Treasury-monitored accounts, externally audited, and directed toward housing, health centers and schools in areas hit by the June 24 earthquakes. Analyst Carmen Beatriz Fernández said "even in the best-case scenario, I did not imagine there would be a change of this magnitude," while Machado adviser Pedro Urruchurtu cautioned the talks "will be relevant to the extent that they produce real, verifiable results." The delegations are scheduled to reconvene in mid-September for further in-person and virtual sessions.