European groups join aid convoy to Cuba amid crippling oil embargo | Political news

Milan, Italy – As Cuba faces a nationwide blackout and energy crisis, the first members of a global aid mission arrived in Havana on Wednesday with more than 20 tons of food, medical supplies and solar panel equipment.

Organized by a coalition of progressive groups, the Nuestra America Convoy to Cuba (NACC) is being pitched as an act of humanitarian support for the island nation and a protest against the United States’ total oil embargo on Cuba.

The convoy includes representatives of Europe’s left-wing political parties, trade unions and advocacy groups that left Milan on Tuesday.

Since the US’s January operation to oust Venezuelan President and Cuban ally Nicolás Maduro, Washington has imposed maximum economic pressure on Havana with a total oil embargo, meaning no foreign fuel shipments have reached the country in the past three months.

Activists say the dramatic escalation, which intensifies Washington’s decades-long embargo, has been largely ignored by its traditional allies across the Atlantic.

“The European Union, the Italian government and the British government must equally oppose and put pressure on President Trump to lift this embargo on Cuba,” said Mauro Trombin, one of the delegates affiliated with the Italian political party Europa Verde (Green Europe).

Before the current crisis, the EU had urged the US to end the embargo against Cuba, with most European countries voting against the sanctions during last year’s United Nations General Assembly (UNGA).

Ian Wallace, Scottish member of the Public and Commercial (PCS) trade union and NACC participant, said the oil blockade was “illegal by every measure”.

“I was expecting (European) countries … to revive trade relations and cultural exchanges with Cuba,” he told Al Jazeera. “Cuba needs fuel … We can take as much humanitarian aid as we can, but that will mask the symptoms, not treat the cause.”

Suffering from severe fuel shortages, the UN has warned that Cuba is facing a total humanitarian collapse.

The governments of China, Chile, Mexico and Canada have sent or pledged to send humanitarian aid to the island. Spain has also promised channel assistance.

The Cuban crisis comes at a time when European powers are questioning their relationship with the US as it wages war on Iran alongside Israel.

Maria Giovanna Tamborello, NACC representative and member of the Switzerland-Cuba Association, said that every year at UNGA European governments “condemn the embargo”, “and then nothing happens”.

Cuban Consul General in Milan Jose Luis Darias Suarez, who met NACC members at Malpensa airport before their departure, struck a more conciliatory tone.

“Currently our relationship with the European Union is managed by the Dialogue Agreement, which entered into force a few years ago and, above all, lays the foundation for a cooperative relationship between us, Cuba and the best (diplomatic) partners of the European Union,” he said.

The agreement refers to the 2016 EU-Cuba Political Dialogue and Cooperation Agreement (PDCA), a legal framework designed to promote Cuban and European human rights and democracy that has governed EU-Cuba relations for the past decade.

But the European Parliament recently passed an amendment to its foreign policy report calling for the PDCA to be suspended, citing Cuba’s worsening human rights record.

The amendment was tabled by the right-wing European Conservatives and Reformists Group (ECR).

Suspending PDCA means stopping humanitarian funding.

Between 1993 and 2020, the EU provided Cuba with 94 million euros ($109m) in humanitarian aid and set aside an additional 125 million euros ($144m) for cooperation with Cuba for the period 2021-27.

According to the European Commission, the funds are designed to boost Cuba’s private sector, help its renewable energy transition and further economic modernization.

Polish MEP Arkadiusz Mularczyk, one of the authors of the parliamentary amendment, told Al Jazeera, “Cuba has fundamentally failed to uphold the commitments that form the legal and moral foundation (of the PDCA).

“Instead, the Cuban regime has grown increasingly authoritarian and repressive.”

He added that the EU “must not get in the way of the US”.

The suspension of the PDCA “signals that the EU’s partnerships are conditional on genuine respect for democracy and human rights,” he said.

In February, Amnesty International warned that “political prisoners” and their family members face persecution in Cuba.

In its annual report on Cuba, Human Rights Watch said the government “continues to suppress and punish dissent and public criticism.”

The Cuban Observatory for Human Rights recorded at least 390 incidents of repression within civil society in January, including 42 arbitrary arrests — an increase compared to previous months.

This piece was published in association with Espacio.