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6. The European Union and Cuba
- University Press of Florida
- Chapter
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6 The European Union and Cuba Joaquín Roy The Setting Fifty years after the triumph of the Cuban Revolution and the establishment of a Marxist-Leninist regime in Cuba, the two fundamental dimensions of this historical phenomenon are the survival of the system created by Fidel Castro and the U.S. policy designed to terminate it. Less known is the relationship of Cuba with other international actors. Most especially there is a vacuum in the literature dedicated to the link between Cuba and Europe, and specifically with some prominent European states, Spain in the lead. At the same time, even less studied is Cuba’s connection with the collective body of the European Union (EU). The interpretations of this complex relationship, not limited to the half century of the regime, have been rather controversial, especially when compared with the U.S. attitude toward Cuba. Explanations and justifications for the development and maintenance of the European-Cuban relation are varied and conflicting . They include a pragmatic commercial policy, an alleged backing of the Cuban regime, an attempt to counter the power of the United States, and a goal of engaging Cuban society and preparing it for a transition to democracy.1 In order to understand a succinct panorama of the European-Cuban relationship, three fundamental topics and issues need to be considered. The first is the actual historical evolution of the European Union’s relations with Cuba. The second is the institutional framework into which this is inserted. The third is the national distribution of leadership, opposition, and cooperation that has contributed to the development of this triangular framework, which expands to a quadrangle when the United States, the unavoidable guest, gets invited or forced to join. 118 · Joaquín Roy In contrast with Spain’s five-hundred-year experience with Cuba, the recognition of Cuba in the institutional framework of the European Union has been a recent historical phenomenon. This peculiarity is explained by some complementary dimensions. The first is the initial membership and the original aims of the European Union since the 1950s. In its early years, the European Community concentrated its efforts on the development of a common commercial policy. The European Political Cooperation, the predecessor of the EU Common Foreign and Security Policy (CFSP), was very modest in its reach. The fact that rapprochement with Cuba had a political connotation in light of the ongoing confrontation between Havana and Washington encouraged the EU leadership to be cautious. Second, from the EU development point of view, Latin America was not even mentioned in the Schuman Declaration that founded the original European Community of Coal and Steel. Only Africa was mentioned as an additional beneficiary of the aims and purposes of European integration. This apparently discriminatory position was due to the overwhelming role played by France, the only European Community power that at the time had former colonies in Africa (with the exception of Belgium’s control over the Congo). The European Union did not consider the Caribbean as a secondary geographic priority until the United Kingdom joined the European Community. The Latin American region at last received the full attention of Brussels in 1986 when Portugal and, most significantly, Spain became members. Yet, the trend toward interest in Cuba was slow in implementation and had to wait for better political circumstances arising from the end of the cold war and the elimination of the COMECON bloc in which Cuba had been inserted. Finally, in 1988, after lengthy negotiations, the European Community and Cuba established full relations with the exchange of diplomatic representatives. The disappearance of the Soviet bloc forced Cuba to find its own political and economic linkages, and Europe became the preferred solution.2 Since then, the official European attitude toward Cuba and its problems with the United States are well illustrated by extracts from two complementary EU documents. On the one hand, the European Union stated that “the U.S. has enacted laws that purport to regulate activities of persons under the jurisdiction of the member states of the European Union; this extraterritorial application violates international law and has adverse effects on the interest of the European Union.”3 And on the other hand, the European Union sent a message to Cuba: to receive favorable treatment through a [52.205.159.48] Project MUSE (2024-03-28 23:36 GMT) The European Union and Cuba · 119 cooperative agreement, the country would have to show progress in the democratic process.4 In sum, the European Union...