Havana's man in Europe is returning from Cuba with a simple request: For his EU partners to drop their focus on human rights. After a two-day visit with the Cuban government, Spanish Foreign Minister Miguel Angel Moratinos will press his Continental counterparts to scrap their 1996 "Common Position" on Cuba in order to fully normalize ties with Raul Castro's dictatorship.
This would be mainly a cosmetic change, since last year the EU abandoned all diplomatic sanctions against Cuba, and Brussels says it expects to pour some €36 million in "cooperation" funds into the country this year. The Castro machine, which remains as repressive as ever despite the substitution of Raul for Fidel, already benefits from preferred trading status with the EU and counts the 27-nation block as its largest trading partner.
The 1996 document is today the EU's only official caveat to ever-warmer relations with Cuba. It lays out that its objective "is to encourage a process of transition to pluralist democracy and respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms." That position statement nudged Germany's Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier in 2008 to temper praise for Havana with dissatisfaction with its human-rights record, and Finnish President Tarja Halonen in 2007 to direct the world to be "firm" as well as "encouraging" with Castro. In other words, it's not much. Even so, Madrid tells us it will use its turn at the EU presidency next year to try to do away with the text and relieve Havana of special scrutiny of its political prisoners—numbering more than 200, at the U.S.'s last count.
Consider Mr. Moratinos a trend-setter in the age of Obama, as the U.S. president's own overtures to Castro (not to mention to Iran, Burma and now Sudan) follow a distinctly Moratinian philosophy. This holds that engaging dictators will yield better results than offering succor to their dissidents, and that tyrants and terrorists are somehow more malleable than their brutality suggests. Mr. Moratinos is the same Socialist minister who has lobbied in the past to have Hamas removed from the EU's blacklist.
To make his point in Havana, Mr. Moratinos did not meet with the families of any political prisoners, nor any independent journalists, nor any human rights organizations. Raul responded with the Castros' standard parting gift for well-behaved guests: human life. He freed a jailed Spanish businessman pending trial, and one political prisoner, the Associated Press reported. We wonder what Mr. Moratinos could offer for the other 199-plus, though we suspect the "change in attitude" he wants toward the regime won't do it.
Despite his passion for engagement, Mr. Moratinos can expect resistance from at least a few EU nations, namely the Czech Republic, the U.K., Sweden, and Germany, who are unlikely to grant Mr. Moratinos's request. But overall, it's been a good year for autocrats in Cuba and beyond seeking international legitimacy while denying their people basic rights. If Mr. Moratinos has his way, 2010 will be even better.
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