The EU changes its man in Cuba related to the regime for an ambassador that Maduro expelled from Venezuela

The European Union has appointed the Portuguese Isabel Brilhante Pedrosa as the next ambassador in Cuba to replace the Spanish Alberto navarro, whose mandate expires on August 31. Brilhante was the former EU representative in Venezuela, a country from which she was expelled as a protest by Maduro’s drug dictatorship to the sanctions imposed from Brussels.

This movement comes in the midst of popular revolt in the Caribbean country against the Cuban dictatorship, a regime that found itself with the support of the current EU representative in Havana, Alberto Navarro. The Spanish diplomat joined in the first person last March to an initiative to demand from the president of the United States, Joe Biden, the end of the embargo on the island.

European diplomacy has explained that the appointment is part of the annual rotation of ambassadors that was scheduled for this year, but the change coincides with the situation of social protest that Cuba is going through. Navarro will continue to be the community representative who deals with the Cuban authorities in the context of the demonstrations and who will demand that Havana, according to the European script, listen to social discontent and meet the demands of the hundreds of Cubans who have demonstrated in recent days. .

In this way, the EU High Representative for Foreign Policy, Josep Borrell, places another ambassador in the Havana square who jumped into the public arena after Venezuela declared her persona ‘non grata’ and was later expelled from the country.

The EU then responded with the same currency by declaring the Venezuelan representative to the European Union, Claudia Salerno, persona non grata, although in her case the measure did not have the same effects as she was also a diplomatic representative to Belgium.

“Dialogue” instead of measures

Of course, this very Thursday the European Union wasted another opportunity to step on the accelerator in the fight for freedom in Cuba and he limited himself to asking, again, for dialogue, in an appearance by the Director for the Americas of the European External Action Service of the European Union, Javier Niño Pérez.

In an act in the Foreign Commission of the European Parliament focused on the situation that Cuba is going through, the Spanish diplomat has defended the need for the authorities of Havana to attend the demands of the demonstrations and address economic and civic reforms to address social unrest on the island.

According to community diplomacy, the mobilizations are the most important since the rafter crisis in 1994, with between 12 and 58 demonstrations involving the participation of hundreds of Cubans in different parts of the island. “They are a combination of factors, from the economic hardship, the hit of the pandemic and the vindication of civic rights”, assured Niño Pérez, who has indicated that in this “perfect storm” the US embargo also plays a role.

In any case, it has shown that Cuba must open a dialogue and listen to citizen demands. “Violence must be avoided and a dynamic of revolutionaries against enemies must be entered. Dialogue and a solution to Cuba’s problems is needed ”, he valued.