What changed

B100288/2026

B100291/2026

European Parliament resolution on the political repression and humanitarian situation in Cuba

(2026/2735(RSP))

The European Parliament,

– having regard to its previous resolutions on Cuba, in particular its resolutions of 12 July 2023 on the state of the EU-Cuba PDCA in the light of the recent visit of the High Representative to the island, and of 29 February 2024 on the critical situation in Cuba,

– having regard to Article 2 and Article 21 of the Treaty on European Union, which affirm the EU’s commitment to democracy, the rule of law, and respect for human rights as foundational principles of its external action,

– having regard to the Political Dialogue and Cooperation Agreement between the European Union and its Member States, of the one part, and the Republic of Cuba, of the other part (PDCA), signed in December 2016 and provisionally applied since 1 November 2017, and in particular to Articles 1(5) and 85(3)(b) thereof,

– having regard to the EU-Cuba Political Dialogue and Cooperation Agreement (PDCA), signed on 13 December 2016 and provisionally applied since 2017, which explicitly conditions cooperation on measurable progress in the area of human rights and the rule of law,

– having regard to the joint hearing of its Committee on Foreign Affairs and its Subcommittee on Human Rights on the current political and human rights situation in Cuba, held on 5 May 2026, and to the testimonies presented by the Rapporteur for Cuba of the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights’, Stuardo Ralón Orellana, and by Cuban opposition leader and former political prisoner José Daniel Ferrer,

– having regard to its previous resolutions on Cuba, in particular its resolutions of 15 November 2023 and 18 September 2024 on the situation of political prisoners and human rights defenders in Cuba,

– having regard to the UN Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment, adopted by the UN General Assembly on 10 December 1984, to which Cuba has been a State Party since 1995, to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights of 10 December 1948, and to other international human rights treaties and instruments,

– having regard to the Humanreports Rightsof Watchthe (HRW)non-governmental Worldorganisation ReportPrisoners 2026Defenders on torture, on the structural violation of Februarydue 2026,process, documentingon systematicconvictions arbitraryfor detention,‘pre-criminal torture,social anddangerousness’, denialon ofdigital duesurveillance processand on forced malnutrition in Cuba,Cuban prisons,

– having regard to Amnestythe International’snew reportsanctions ofimposed Aprilin June 2026 entitledby ‘Thethe StateUnited ofStates theagainst World’sMiguel HumanDíaz-Canel Rights’,and documentingmembers 529of arbitraryhis detentionsfamily, andagainst 39relatives deathsof inRaúl custodyCastro, inand 2025against inentities Cuba,of the regime’s military apparatus,

– having regard to the Freedom Accord, signed in Miami on 2 March 2026 by the two largest Cuban opposition coalitions, Pasos de Cambio and the Asamblea de la Resistencia Cubana (ARC),

– having regard to its resolution of 21 January 2026 on the implementation of the common foreign and security policy – annual report 2025, which, owing to an amendment tabled by the ECR Group, calls for the suspension of privileged cooperation with Cuba,

– having regard to Rule 136(2) of its Rules of Procedure,

A. whereas Cuba has been governed without interruption since 1959 by a single-party communist regime that has systematically denied its citizens the most fundamental political and civil freedoms; whereas the Cuban Communist Party holds a constitutional monopoly on power, all other political parties are illegal, and political dissent is a criminal offence;

A. whereas more than five decades of political, economic and geopolitical choices made by the Cuban communist regime have led the country into a profound political, economic and social crisis, bringing Cuba increasingly close to having the characteristics of a failed state; whereas this situation is compounded by systematic and persistent violations of human rights and fundamental freedoms, the continuation of a one-party political system, the absence of free, fair and competitive elections, the prohibition of political pluralism and the denial of the right of citizens to freely associate for political purposes;

B. whereas communism as a governing system has, wherever applied, has resulted in poverty, repression, and injustice; whereas Cuba further confirms this historical pattern;

B. whereas the communist regime in Cuba has grown more repressive and more destabilising in the region, having sustained the Chávez and, later, Maduro regimes in Venezuela and propped up the Ortega-Murillo dictatorship in Nicaragua; whereas the regime in Cuba has become more openly aligned with the enemies of Europe, despite the EU’s sustained political and financial openness and despite the PDCA, which entered into force almost 10 years ago; whereas the High Representative of the Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy has acknowledged that the agreement has not met its objectives; whereas the agreement is now under review;

C. whereas Cuba possesses significant natural and human potential that could make it one of the most prosperous nations in the Caribbean; whereas neighbouring Caribbean states that operate under free-market democratic systems, such as the Dominican Republic and Costa Rica, have achieved substantial prosperity; whereas Cuba’s GDP per capita is among the lowest of the Latin American and Caribbean nations;

C. whereas the Cuban regime co-founded, and remains a leading force within, the São Paulo Forum, a network of parties created to regroup the authoritarian left after the collapse of the Soviet bloc; whereas Cuba has used the São Paulo Forum to coordinate, legitimise and sustain authoritarian movements throughout Latin America;

D. whereas Cuba is experiencing its deepest economic and humanitarian crisis in decades; whereas the Cuban Observatory of Human Rights estimated that 89 % of the population live in extreme poverty;

D. whereas the recent history of central and eastern Europe shows that communist dictatorships do not democratise in exchange for dialogue and subsidies, but yield only to firm pressure and solidarity with those they oppress;

E. whereas Cuba’s population has fallen by over 1.4 million people in three years; whereas this demographic collapse is a direct consequence of political repression and economic misery; whereas between 2021 and mid-2024, more than 860 000 Cubans arrived in the United States alone;

E. whereas Cuba is in the grip of a compounding humanitarian and economic crisis, marked by power cuts of up to 22 hours a day, acute shortages of food, fuel and medicine, and frequent water shortages, thus meeting many of the criteria associated with a failed state; whereas the regime depends on imported fuels, but its traditional suppliers – Russia, Venezuela and Mexico – have halted or curtailed deliveries and US sanctions have further restricted Cuba’s access to resources;

F. whereas the current humanitarian crisis is primarily the result of decades of economic mismanagement, central planning, and an absence of private property guarantees; whereas attempts to attribute Cuba’s humanitarian catastrophe exclusively to external factors fail to acknowledge the responsibility of the Cuban authorities for policies that have remained largely unchanged for over six decades;

F. whereas this collapse is the consequence of decades of economic mismanagement and of the militarisation of the economy, and not of external pressure; whereas GAESA, the holding company of the Cuban Armed Forces, is estimated to control around 40 % of the Cuban economy, including banking, fuel, food retail and tourism, while ordinary citizens are left without basic goods;

G. whereas, according to the non-governmental organisation Prisoners Defenders, there are approximately 1 200 political prisoners in Cuba as of mid-2026, including minors, journalists, artists and religious leaders;

G. whereas the United States has adopted targeted sanctions against senior figures of the regime and against the institutions of its security and military apparatus, citing the regime’s repression of its own people and its hostile activities abroad;

H. whereas political repression intensified following the nationwide protests of July 2021 when hundreds of thousands of citizens took to the streets in over 50 cities; whereas over 1 400 people were arrested, 790 indicted, and many sentenced to up to 22 years in prison;

H. whereas a number of European companies have for years benefited from and operated within the economic structures controlled by the regime, thereby contributing directly or indirectly to the prolongation of the totalitarian system; whereas as sanctions tighten and the Cuban communist system appears to be approaching an inevitable collapse, the remaining European companies have begun to terminate or significantly reduce their presence in Cuba; whereas the Spanish hotel groups Meliá and Iberostar have withdrawn their management and branding from numerous resorts, while the French shipping company CMA CGM and the German carrier Hapag-Lloyd, together accounting for around 60 % of Cuba’s maritime traffic, have suspended their services to and from the island;

I. whereas the Cuban regime has survived for over six decades thanks to ideological and material support from fellow authoritarian states; whereas from 1999, Venezuela, under Hugo Chávez and Nicolás Maduro, became Cuba’s principal patron;

I. whereas ‘business as usual’ with such a regime legitimises the oppressor and betrays the oppressed;

J. whereas since 1988, the EU has provided over EUR 300 million to Cuba through more than 200 development projects; whereas approximately EUR 125 million was allocated for the 2021–2027 period; whereas in 2025 alone, the EU mobilised nearly EUR 6 million, and an additional EUR 2 million in humanitarian aid in April 2026; whereas a substantial portion of these funds flows through regime-controlled institutions, in some cases benefiting Cuban police and military authorities;

J. whereas the number of political prisoners documented by independent organisations exceeds one thousand, including persons detained as minors; whereas the case of José Daniel Ferrer, founder of the Patriotic Union of Cuba and a prisoner of conscience whose release the European Parliament has repeatedly demanded, is emblematic of the regime’s methods; whereas José Daniel Ferrer was ultimately driven into exile in October 2025;

K. whereas the EU signed the PDCA with Cuba in December 2016 with an explicit human rights conditionality; whereas despite the continuous and documented deterioration of the human rights situation since 2016, the EU has not suspended the PDCA;

K. whereas in a statistically representative study by Prisoners Defenders, every political prisoner examined, including minors, had suffered torture and was denied medical care; whereas abuse by state agents is excluded, in law and practice, from ordinary jurisdiction, leaving the Cuban Armed Forces and the Ministry of the Interior with effective impunity;

L. whereas left-wing European political forces continue to praise the Cuban regime as a model of social justice, while systematically deflecting responsibility for the humanitarian crisis onto the US embargo; whereas Cuba’s economic collapse is the direct result of over six decades of failed central planning, political repression, and economic mismanagement;

L. whereas no systems are in place in Cuba to address the fact that liberty is currently being deprived; whereas the Cuban Constitution subordinates the judiciary, the prosecution and the legal profession to the President and the Communist Party, in clear breach of the rights to an independent tribunal and an effective defence;

1. Strongly condemns the systematic, ongoing, and worsening political repression perpetrated by the Cuban Communist regime against its own citizens, including arbitrary detention, torture, denial of fair trial, enforced disappearances, and the imprisonment of journalists, artists, religious leaders, minors and peaceful protesters;

M. whereas vaguely defined offences, such as enemy propaganda, contempt, public disorder, sedition, resistance and disobedience, together with summary proceedings and the trial of civilians before military courts, are systematically used to criminalise the freedoms of expression, assembly, association and religion;

2. Calls for the release of all political prisoners in Cuba, currently estimated at between 1 197 and 1 260; demands the release of all those imprisoned in connection with the July 2021 protests, many of whom face sentences of up to 22 years;

N. whereas thousands of Cubans have been punished under the former offence of ‘pre-criminal social dangerousness’, without having committed or attempted a crime; whereas although the 2022 Penal Code formally abolished that category of offence, it preserves similar pre-criminal mechanisms by allowing authorities of the Ministry of the Interior to issue warnings to persons deemed ‘prone to commit crimes or to break the social and constitutional order’, with non-compliance punishable by imprisonment;

3. Condemns the systematic use by the Cuban regime of arbitrary detention, intimidation, censorship, political persecution, and restrictions on freedom of expression and assembly;

O. whereas reports indicate that tens of thousands of inmates endure forced malnutrition on rations providing barely a 10th of minimum daily energy needs, compounded by insanitary conditions and the denial of medical care; whereas the July 2021 protester Alexander Díaz Rodríguez, released in April 2026 with extreme malnutrition, anaemia and advanced thyroid cancer, is proof of the life-threatening conditions imposed on political prisoners;

4. Points out that the humanitarian catastrophe in Cuba, including extreme poverty affecting approximately 89 % of the population, chronic food shortages, systematic electricity blackouts, collapse of healthcare provision, and a demographic crisis unprecedented in Cuban history, is the direct consequence of over 65 years of communist mismanagement and totalitarian governance;

P. whereas the regime runs a pervasive system of digital surveillance through the state telecommunications monopoly, with selective internet outages, blockages of services, interception of private communications and reprisals against dissenters’ families, generating fear and leading to self-censorship at home and in the diaspora;

5. Rejects categorically the portrayal that attributes Cuba’s humanitarian crisis primarily to the US trade embargo; recalls that Cuba’s GDP per capita is among the lowest of the countries in the entire Latin American and Caribbean region;

Q. whereas these systematic and widespread practices, directed against the civilian population as a deliberate instrument of state policy, may amount to crimes against humanity;

6. Condemns those left-wing European political forces that have consistently praised the Cuban regime as a model of social justice and that have systematically failed to condemn its torture of dissidents, its detention of political prisoners, and its forced displacement of over a million citizens;

R. whereas the Cuban democratic opposition and resistance, on the island and in exile, have united to an unprecedented degree behind a single Freedom Accord and a common transition plan, despite decades of dispersion; whereas this rare unity offers the EU a credible partner and structured roadmap for a free and democratic Cuba;

7. Calls on the Commission and the Council to immediately suspend the PDCA with Cuba given that the core human rights conditionality clauses of the agreement have been systematically violated by the Cuban authorities since it was signed in 2016;

S. whereas the regime has aligned itself with the Russian Federation’s war of aggression against Ukraine and has become a source of recruits fighting on Russia’s behalf, thereby directly threatening European security; whereas, according to Ukrainian sources, Cuban nationals constitute the largest group of foreign recruits fighting alongside Russian forces in Russia’s war of aggression against Ukraine;

8. Calls on the Commission to conduct an immediate audit of all EU funds disbursed to Cuba since 2016, totalling over EUR 300 million, to determine what proportion of these funds has directly or indirectly benefited the regime’s security apparatus, police authorities, or military institutions rather than independent Cuban civil society;

T. whereas the regime persistently refuses entry to delegations of the European Parliament, to UN special rapporteurs and to independent monitors, and insists on excluding the democratic opposition and independent civil society from any political dialogue;

9. Insists that all EU funds to Cuba must be immediately frozen for as long as the current criminal regime remains in power; stresses that no EU taxpayer money should continue to flow to a dictatorship that systematically violates human rights and imprisons its citizens for exercising basic freedoms;

1. Condemns in the strongest terms the systematic and widespread repression carried out by the Cuban communist regime against its own people, including torture, arbitrary detention, forced malnutrition, mass surveillance, forced labour and judicial persecution;

10. Deplores the Commission’s unconditional engagement with the Cuban dictatorship; opposes the decision to continue disbursing substantial EU funds and to announce additional humanitarian assistance in April 2026, thereby providing the regime with hard currency and political legitimacy while the repression intensifies and Cuban citizens continue to suffer;

2. Recalls that independent investigations have concluded that the Cuban regime’s security apparatus has been responsible for assassinations of political opponents, including the deaths of Oswaldo Payá and Harold Cepero; further recalls that the United States has charged former Cuban Defence Minister Raúl Castro and other senior regime officials in relation to the 1996 destruction of two Brothers to the Rescue aircraft in international airspace, resulting in the deaths of four civilians;

11. Reaffirms that Cuba possesses immense human, cultural and economic potential; affirms that a democratic transition based on political freedom, free elections, private initiative, and the rule of law would allow the country to prosper and offer its citizens the opportunities they have long been denied;

3. Demands the immediate and unconditional release of all political prisoners and of all persons arbitrarily detained for exercising their fundamental rights, and calls for full reparation to be made to the victims of torture and ill treatment;

12. Instructs its President to forward this resolution to the Council, the Commission, the Vice-President of the Commission / High Representative of the Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy, the governments and parliaments of the Member States, the Secretary-General of the United Nations, the High Commissioner for Human Rights, the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, the Organization of American States, and the Cuban Government.

4. Concludes that the PDCA has failed in its core purpose and that the regime’s conduct constitutes persistent and substantial violations of the agreement’s essential human rights provisions; calls, therefore, for Article 86(4) PDCA to be triggered without further delay, for the agreement to be suspended and for the procedure for its termination to begin;

5. Reiterates its call on the Council to adopt targeted measures under the EU Global Human Rights Sanctions Regime against those responsible, beginning with Miguel Díaz-Canel and the senior chain of command of the security, judicial and penitentiary apparatus;

6. Welcomes the targeted measures adopted by the United States against named members of the regime’s leadership and against the entities of its security, military and surveillance apparatus; considers that sustained and coordinated international pressure on the dictatorship is the most effective means of advancing democratic change and is consistent with Parliament’s own calls for sanctions;

7. Notes that, since February 2026, the United States has authorised exports of fuel and other essential goods to Cuba’s private businesses and households while excluding the regime, its armed forces and GAESA-controlled entities; calls on the Commission and the Member States to develop adequate humanitarian channels through which energy, food and medicine can be delivered directly to the Cuban people and to independent enterprises, bypassing the criminal Cuban state;

8. Calls on European companies to refrain from commercial dealings with Cuban state and military-controlled entities, in particular GAESA and its subsidiaries, as such revenues underwrite the regime’s apparatus rather than benefit the Cuban people;

9. Affirms that EU policy should add to, not offset, pressure on the regime’s economic power base, and that the EU’s priority must be solidarity with the Cuban people rather than the protection of arrangements that benefit their oppressors;

10. Calls for the immediate suspension of all EU funds channelled to or through Cuban state entities, and for any future cooperation to be redirected exclusively to independent civil society, the democratic opposition or the Cuban people;

11. Recalls that engagement without conditionality has never reformed a dictatorship and serves only to prolong it; affirms that solidarity with Cuban democratic activists, not accommodation with their jailers, must guide EU policy;

12. Maintains that no political dialogue with Havana is acceptable if it excludes the democratic opposition and independent civil society, whose inclusion the PCDA itself requires;

13. Expresses its full support for the Freedom Accord and for the united Cuban opposition and resistance behind it; recognises Pasos de Cambio, the ARC and their partner organisations as legitimate voices of the Cuban people’s democratic aspirations; calls on the Commission, the Council and the Member States to engage with them directly and to treat their transition plan for the liberation, stabilisation, reconstruction and democratisation of the country as a reference framework for the EU’s policy towards a free Cuba;

14. Calls on the regime to abolish, in all its forms, the pre-criminal mechanisms that allow the state to silence and arbitrarily imprison citizens, and to release those convicted under it without having committed any crime;

15. Demands an end to all forms of state-imposed forced labour, including within the medical brigades, the earnings of which are largely appropriated by the state;

16. Calls for an independent international investigation into prison conditions, the regime of forced malnutrition and deaths in custody;

17. Condemns Cuba’s material support for Russia’s war of aggression against Ukraine, including the recruitment of Cuban nationals to fight against Ukraine, and insists that this be treated as a matter of European security across all dimensions of relations with Havana; condemns the Cuban regime’s alignment with the Lukashenka regime in Belarus, which extends beyond political and economic cooperation to include close military and security ties; stresses that such cooperation undermines European security;

18. Demands that the regime grant immediate and unconditional access to delegations of the European Parliament, to UN special rapporteurs and to independent observers, and deplores its repeated refusal to do so;

19. Calls on the High Representative of the Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy and the Member States to raise these violations of human rights consistently in all relevant forums and to support accountability and a peaceful, democratic transition in Cuba, led by citizens, in line with the principles and objectives set out in the Freedom Accord;

20. Instructs its President to forward this resolution to the Council, the Commission, the Vice-President of the Commission / High Representative of the Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy, the Member States, the Organization of American States, the United Nations, and the authorities of the Republic of Cuba.