Mogherini Urges Cuba to Facilitate European Investment
By Guillermo Nova and Sinikka Tarvainen, dpa
HAVANA TIMES – European Union foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini on Monday called on Cuba to facilitate European investment by reducing red tape.
“To open the economy and to overcome what President [Miguel] Diaz-Canel has called the ‘internal blockage’ is crucially important,” Mogherini said at the opening ceremony of the second Cuba-EU Joint Council in Havana.
“We want to see how we can benefit even more from the potential of our economic cooperation, including trade and investment,” she said.
A 2016 political dialogue and cooperation agreement launched a new era by replacing and thus putting an end to the EU’s so-called Common Position, which had severely limited relations in an attempt to pressure Cuba over alleged human rights violations since 1996.
“We hope that the new chapter we have opened can further strengthen the friendship between the people of Europe and of Cuba,” Mogherini said.
The EU has financed projects in areas including agriculture, the environment and the preservation of Cuba’s cultural heritage worth about 200 million euros (221 million dollars) since 2008, according to the EU foreign policy chief.
She called it “an example that Europe is firmly committed to Cuba’s development.”
“The celebration of this second Joint Council is an example of the progress of the relations with the EU,” said Cuban Foreign Minister Bruno Rodriguez.
The two sides agreed to launch sectoral policy dialogues in the fields of energy, agriculture, environment and climate change, according to an EU statement.
Mogherini advocated “multilateralism and the norm-based international system” in an apparent criticism of US legislation allowing US citizens to sue foreign companies and individuals utilizing property confiscated in Cuba by the Havana government.
Cuba is at “a crossroads” after experiencing a “generational transition” when Diaz-Canel succeeded Raul Castro in 2018 and enacting a new constitution earlier this year, Mogherini said.
The country now “faces new challenges in carrying out its economic modernization in a very difficult environment,” she added.
Who is surprised by the cosy relationship between Bruno Rodriguez and Federica Mogherini who in 2016 chose to restore “normal relations” with Cuba at a meeting in Cuba when Bruno having clearly out-manoeuvred Mogherini justifiably emerged like a pussy cat having licked cream. That the EU is busy providing succour to a totalitarian dictatorship which has not changed its policy of repression is shameful.
Cuba is not at a crossroads – the total energies of the Castro regime are directed at pursuing the same policies and conditions which they have firmly established over sixty years. There has been no change. Mogherini should know that investment by foreign companies can lead to directors going to jail following the trumped-up charge of “corruption” – the definition of paying good employees more than the pittance permitted by the Castro regime.
Mogherini is weak and obviously subject to flattery. The EU made a bad selection in appointing her. Cuba will take all the financial support the EU can provide and in reply what can the EU expect? Nada!
It is a national disgrace, to have foreigners come to Cuba and plead with fossilized bureaucrats to open the door of investments, create jobs for our desperate youths and provide the general population with improved living conditions, food, medicine, transportation and much more.
Cuba must stop acting like a “virgin” or “señorita” with everyone running behind her, pleading to become part of its improvement, while a desperate population remains dirt poor.
Europeans are not Communist or Socialists as we claim here in America.