The Wall Street Journal’s columnist, Mary Anastasia O’Grady, has penned a severe criticism of the European Union’s financial aid to the island. This July, for example, the EU “sent E500,000 to Cuba, ostensibly for ‘public health’” and its “Multiannual Indicative Programme (MIP) for Cuba for 2021-2024 amounts to €91 million.”[1]
“Anna Fotyga, a former Polish minister of foreign affairs and a former member of the European Parliament, wrote in the European Conservative last week that it’s ‘estimated that the EU is currently funding 80 projects in Cuba at a cost of nearly 155 million euros. Every single one of these projects is run by organizations with close ties to the Raul Castro regime.’”
In short,”there is no such thing as an independent nongovernmental organization that receives money from abroad in Cuba. . . . Sending money to Cuba is sending money to the regime.”
Moreover, “European aid . . . also goes against European interests because Havana is helping Russia in its effort to take Ukraine.”
“[B]ankrupt Havana is desperate for hard currency. First because its economy doesn’t grow. Second because it needs to maintain its repressive police state, at home and in Venezuela where the Cuban agents have infiltrated the military.”
“J11 (the day of mass arrests of Cuban protesters) “revealed the raw brutality the regime uses to keep the lid on popular discontent. Condemnation came from all quarters. Hollywood apologists went silent.”
“Dissident leader Daniel Ferrer is in a prison on the other end of the island. The website Ciber Cuba reported on Aug. 22 that the 56-year-old ‘is in a sealed cell, where hardly any air circulates’ and there is no daylight. He ‘perceives a constant noise within the cell’ and suffers “severe headaches, ringing in the ears, bleeding in the mouth, loss of vision, cramps, and momentary paralysis in his hands.”
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[1] O’Grady, The EU Funds Havana—and Helps Moscow, W.S.J. (Sept. 1, 2024); O’Grady’s bio.
