The European Parliament has called on the Council of the European Union to use the EU’s so-called ‘Magnitsky law’ regime as soon as possible to adopt sanctions against those responsible for human rights violations in Cuba, in a joint resolution by the EPP, Renew Europe, and ECR groups adopted on Thursday 16 September by a comfortable majority (426 votes in favour, 146 against and 115 abstentions).
Leopoldo López Gil (EPP) called on the EU to stop “this farce” of maintaining the EU/Cuba association agreement, in place since 2016, without activating its human rights clauses while the Cuban government harshly repressed July protests that criticised the management of the Covid-19 pandemic and shortages of basic goods (see EUROPE 12772/7).
In their resolution, MEPs call on the EU to “call an immediate meeting [of the Joint Committee of the bilateral agreement] in the light of the breaches of the agreement on the part of the Cuban Government, which constitutes a ‘case of special urgency’”.
“We believe it is necessary to continue the dialogue”, because the previous policy, based on the 1996 Common Position making the deepening of EU/Cuba relations conditional on progress on human rights in the island, “has not produced results”, said Ylva Johansson on behalf of the European Commission.
See the text of the resolution: https://bit.ly/3zgMYCL (Original version in French by Mathieu Bion)