Vol. 72/No. 28      July 14, 2008

In 2003 the imperialist governments in Europe that make up the EU imposed sanctions that included ending all high-level visits to Cuba, cutting back on cultural exchanges with the island, and inviting opponents of the Cuban Revolution to receptions on their national holidays at their embassies in Havana.

The measures were imposed in an attempt to try to politically isolate the Cuban government, using as a pretext the trials of 75 opponents of the revolution that Washington and other imperialist powers falsely claimed were persecuted for their political beliefs. The 75 were convicted for participating in acts backed and financed by the U.S. government as part of its nearly five-decades-long effort to destroy the Cuban Revolution.

Continuing the campaign waged by imperialist governments from Washington to Madrid to Ottawa to brand Cuba as a repressive government, EU external relations commissioner Benita Ferrero-Waldner said that Cuba must release all alleged political prisoners.

“There will be very clear language also on what the Cubans still have to do,” she said.

Washington was not pleased with the lifting of sanctions. U.S. State Department spokesperson Sean McCormack, called the EU decision a “tactical difference.”

Capitalists rulers in Europe have sought to get an edge over their U.S. competitors by trading and investing in Cuba, at the same time that they have joined in the efforts to undermine the socialist revolution.

In 1996 U.S. president William Clinton signed into law the so-called Cuban Liberty and Democratic Solidarity (Libertad) Act, which tightened the economic embargo against Cuba that Washington has maintained since 1960.

At the same time, in 1996 the EU adopted a “Common Position on Cuba” that imposed conditions on Cuba for “democratic reforms.” Cuba’s Foreign Ministry called the EU position an “interventionist text,” that rather than rejecting the U.S. law, reached for “an understanding” with Washington.

The British Guardian newspaper reported June 23 that British banks have been honoring the U.S. embargo of Cuba even though the United Kingdom has no restrictions or laws that prevent UK companies from trading with Cuba.

According to the Guardian, London-based Barclays Bank last year told two Cuban enterprises to take their accounts elsewhere. And just last week Lloyds TSB told a London cigar importer and a natural food company, which imported Cuban sugar, that the bank would no longer carry out transactions involving Cuba.

“Lloyds TSB, Barclays Bank, the Royal Bank of Scotland, and HSBC are all complying with the U.S. blockade,” the paper said, although all “are reluctant to talk about it.”  
 
 
Front page (for this issue) | Home | Text-version home