The spouses of Colombian nationals expelled from Venezuela due to the nations' escalating border crisis will be offered citizenship, the government in Bogotá announced on Sunday.

With the move, Colombian authorities aim to reunite families that have been separated following Nicolás Maduro's state of emergency, which the embattled Venezuelan president has used to close the border and deport more than 1,000 undocumented Colombian immigrants.

"We're going to give (the Venezuelan spouses of our nationals) Colombian citizenship," Foreign Minister Maria Angela Holguín said in a statement. "We want families to live together, not to break them apart."

Accompanied by Government Ombudsman Jorge Armando Otálora, Holguín had visited the border town of Cúcuta last Monday to assess the situation in person. Later in the week, she held talks with her Venezuelan counterpart, Delcy Rodríguez, but the foreign ministers could not agree to reopen border checkpoints or end the deportations of hundreds of Colombians.

As the crossings in Venezuela's western Táchira state remained closed, meanwhile, local residents took to dugout canoes over the weekend to row across a river separating the two nations and shop in neighboring Colombia, The Associated Press noted.

Maduro's decision to close the checkpoints has "disrupted lives in a region where many people routinely cross the border to work, shop and visit family," the AP reported. The AP estimated that up to 5 million Colombians live in Venezuela, though many of them hold dual citizenship.

The European Union, meanwhile, warned that the closure threatened "the overall humanitarian situation, security and stability in the bordering region" and urged both countries to avoid further escalation, the bloc's European External Action Service said.

But the Venezuelan foreign ministry decried the EU statement as "immoral and hypocritical," according to the semi-official Telesur television network.

"These European bureaucrats ... have no moral or authority to interfere in bilateral issues that do not concern them," the ministry charged. They "hide a double standard (because they) have caused colossal human tragedies in the Mediterranean Sea, which stem from military intervention and terrorist violence in Middle East, Asia and Africa."