The Diplomat
The PP delegation in the European Parliament, together with members of the EPP and some from other groups such as Renew and the ECR conservatives, have sent a letter to the EU High Representative for Foreign Policy, Josep Borrell, in which they ask him to dismiss the EU ambassador in Havana, the Spanish Alberto Navarro, whom they accuse of having positioned himself with the Cuban regime.
Specifically, the MEPs who signed the letter, including Dolors Montserrat, Esteban González Pons, Antonio López-Istúriz and Leopoldo López Gil, criticize a letter that Navarro recently sent to the new U.S. President, Joe Biden, asking him to lift the embargo on Cuba, reports Europa Press.
For the signatories, this “constitutes a serious fact in a totally unfortunate and erratic line of action on what should be the defense of our interests and values as a union of democratic and lawful states”.
In addition, they denounce that Navarro tried to get his “crazy initiative” to be supported by diplomatic representatives of other EU member countries, who declined to sign the letter proposed by the ambassador, as reported by the PP in a statement.
In this sense, they believe that the EU ambassador in Havana seems to take “political positions in line with a regime that neither respects nor defends Human Rights or democratic plurality and allows himself licenses more typical of a political leader than of a diplomatic representative”. The letter to Biden, they add, is “one more act in the long list of grievances that Ambassador Navarro has inflicted on the European Parliament”.
Thus, they have recalled that Navarro has blocked the participation in a hearing organized by the Delegation for Central America of the European Parliament of the winners of the Sakharov Prize for Human Rights awarded by this institution, boycotting and denying access to the EU facilities in Havana to the winners and guests to participate telematically in that hearing.
They have also criticized the fact that the president of the Ladies in White of Cuba, Berta Soler, winner of the Sakharov Prize, has not been attended to by the staff of the EU Embassy in Havana, despite the numerous and periodic detentions of which she and the other members of her organization are victims.
Moreover, in their letter to Borrell, the undersigned MEPs reproach the said embassy for not publishing the resolutions of the European Parliament, including the resolution of November 29, 2019 on the arbitrary detention of José Daniel Ferrer and the violation of civil liberties in Cuba.
Given all these circumstances, the signatories have considered that Navarro, who was Secretary of State for the EU in the government of José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, “is not worthy of the high functions that he holds and is entrusted with”, so they have asked Borrell to proceed “to his immediate replacement”.
In parallel, the PP MEPs together with those of Renew and ERC have sent a parliamentary question to Borrell in which they ask his opinion on what have been the advances in terms of civil liberties and Human and political Rights in Cuba since the Political Dialogue and Cooperation Agreement with the EU was signed in December 2016.
In addition, they have asked with which Cuban civil society organizations the EU Embassy in Havana has met since 2019, and what steps it has taken in response to the arrests and harassment suffered by the island’s Sakharov prizewinners and members of the San Isidro Movement and 27N.
