This Week in Europe, 7 July 2000
Executive Director of the Caribbean Council for Europe
The signing on July 5 of a partial scope trade and economic co-operation agreement between Cuba and Caricom marks a significant step forward in regional relations and an important practical step towards the ability of the Caribbean to increase its standing in Europe and the world.
In an extraordinarily short time, Cuba and it negotiating teams working with the Caribbean's Regional Negotiating Machinery, with reference to Caribbean Governments, have been able to achieve agreement on a basis for eventual, tariff-free two-way trade between the more developed nations of Caricom and Cuba. This means that gradually and in phases, Cuba and much of the region will open their markets to each others exports and pursue programmes of co-operation and economic integration in fields such as tourism. At a later stage Cuba will consider with neighbours reciprocal arrangements for trade in services and the creation of specific arrangements on investment and intellectual property rights. The new agreement also contains provisions for trade between Cuba and the region’s less developed economies.
The signing comes not long after Cuba's decision, in the face of covert hostility from certain European Union (EU) states, to retire its application to become a co-signatory to the new EU/ACP partnership arrangement. The Caribbean had hoped that inclusion of Cuba in the new ACP/EU Treaty would facilitate Cuba’s full integration into the region and the ACP. But it was not to be. The new Treaty was eventually signed in Cotunu, Benin on June 23 without Cuba and despite the continuing desire of the whole ACP group and a number of European states such as Spain and France for Cuba's inclusion.
The establishment of new trade arrangements between the region and Cuba and the preparedness of certain EU nations to all but block Cuba’s participation in the new Convention are elements in a multidimensional game of chess in which all players are positioning their pieces. This is for an end game which anticipates not change in Cuba but in the United States’ Cuba policy.
For much of the last two years US contact with Cuba has been growing. However, the contradictions within the US and the need for a new approach could not have become more public than in the saga of Elian Gonzalez. Contrary to US and international law the boy was all but taken hostage in Miami until an extraordinary alliance between Cuba, the US Administration, US public opinion and the US Courts enabled the boy's dignified father to see natural justice restored and return home with his son. The effect was to split the Cuban American community, cause the US electorate and many in Congress to see the absurdities of the United States’ outdated Cuba policy and Cuba to emerge strengthened and the moral victor.
As the year goes on, the need for a new approach will be emphasised by two further Cuba related developments.
At about the same time that the Elian Gonzalez case was being resolved, the US House of Representatives and Senate, under pressure from powerful agricultural interests, voted, against all precedent, to approve bills lifting the US embargo on food and medical sales to Cuba. While it is still far from clear whether the House and Senate versions can be married together and negative amendments stripped out by the time the bill comes to a vote later this month, the fact that it has proceeded so far says much about the changing climate on Cuba in the US.
US policy on Cuba, or more specifically the approach of the US Congress, will again be tested later this month in Europe as the World Trade Organisation's (WTO) disputes settlement body deals with Europe's request for a panel to consider its complaint against the US over a law stripping the French liquor company Pernod Ricard of the rights to use the Havana Club trade name in the US market.
The case is complex but revolves around whether section 211 of the US Omnibus Trade Bill of October 1998 violates a WTO agreement on intellectual property rights by treating some foreign brand name owners less favourably than those in the US. While there is a view in parts of Europe that the case is really about adding to the EU's portfolio of transatlantic dispute which can be used as bargaining chips once a new US President is in office, it is another symbol of the apparent willingness of the US Congress when it comes to Cuba to legislate without concern for the international consequences.
From Cuba's perspective much of what has happened in the last few months - but most importantly not its enhanced relationship with the rest of the region - is a part of a new phase in its ongoing war with the US. According to Raul Castro, who leads Cuba's armed forces, Cuba is now engaged in a battle of ideas. It is a war in which the dilemmas posed by moral issues in cases such as that of Elian Gonzalez or the sale of medicines will, Havana believes, lead opinion and particularly that in the US, to conclusions about who is right and who is in the wrong.
For the Caribbean the closer integration of Cuba into the region carries with it the real possibility of adding weight to the region's presence in international bodies and negotiations. It turns a region of 5.5m English speakers into a grouping of around 32m once Haiti, the Dominican Republic are also included. Together the grouping now accounts for 21 votes in international institutions such as the United Nations, has serious reach outside of the Americas to other parts of the developing world and the possibility of real weight in dialogue with the nations of the future: China, south Africa, India and Brazil, as well as a basis for enhanced leverage in dialogue with the EU and the US. Cuba's significantly deeper relationship with the rest of the region also offers a wide range of new economic opportunities. At its most obvious there are opportunities for trade with and investment in a vastly larger partner. But more creatively it offers potentially new types of structures involving joint ventures and production sharing with larger regional partners and European or Canadian companies interested in manufacture of supply of goods to for instance the regional tourist industry
This is of course not to pretend that all is well inside Cuba or that its system has relevance to the rest of the region. Rather it is to suggest that there are sound political, economic and geo-strategic reasons why the integration of Cuba at a time when US policy may be subject to revision, will enhance dramatically the Caribbean’s place in the world.