We are seeing the biggest protests against Cuba’s Communist regime in decades. As the Caribbean country faces one of its biggest economic crises since the fall of the Soviet Union, thousands of Cubans, chanting “freedom” and calling for President Miguel Diaz-Canel to step down, joined street protests from Havana to Santiago last weekend in the biggest anti-government demonstrations on the Communist-run island in decades. Several protesters, activist and journalists were detained. “The place for these people is not in prison but in a public discourse,” EU foreign affairs spokesman Peter Stano told reporters in Brussels. calling the arrest “unacceptable” and asking the Cuban authorities “to release immediately” all those detained. Stano did not say whether EU’s chief diplomat Joseph Borrell planned to intervene further on the matter. Relations with Cuba have been strained in recent years, due to the EU’s numerous accusations of Havana’s human rights abuses, which have been a sticking point of a 2016 political dialogue and cooperation agreement (PDCA). The agreement has been ratified by all member states except Lithuania. Spanish MEP José Ramón Bauzá (Renew) sent a letter to Borrell this week, signed by 32 MEPs, calling on the EU chief diplomat to “strongly condemn” the Cuban government’s repression, pressure for the release of detainees and convene an urgent meeting under the PDCA. “With regard to specific economic measures, European funds should be supporting Cuba’s independent civil society, and not state-owned enterprises, which ends up enriching the regime’s elite,” Bauzá, a member of the European Parliament’s Foreign Affairs Committee (AFET), told EURACTIV. “This would be a first step for the EU to start putting its money where its mouth is,” he added. The Spanish MEP added that “unless there is a clear commitment by Cuban authorities to implement the human rights provisions of the agreement and deliver real democratic change, the EU should immediately activate the suspension mechanism” as “the PDCA has failed in achieving its objectives”. He also criticised Borrell for his allegedly “half-hearted criticism” towards the Cuban regime. Earlier in June, Borrell had come under fire in what some considered an in-house political game when he had to defend before the European Parliament the ratification and implementation of a political dialogue agreement with Cuba. A leaked email had suggested close proximity between some Socialist EU lawmakers and the Cuban regime, but Borrel dismissed it as “ridiculous”. | 
