Not waiving but frowning: Pompeo activates Title III

US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has announced that the US government is to activate a law which will allow Cuban-Americans and others to sue non-US companies party to transactions which had involved property seized by the Cuban government during and after the Communist takeover in 1959.

Title III of the Helms-Burton Act has been waived by every US president since the Act came into force in 1996. Observers suggest that the move is at least in part intended to end Cuban support for the Venezuelan regime, and president Nicolas Maduro, whom the US and other countries regard as ‘illegitimate’.

National security adviser John Bolton has recently described Cuba, Venezuela and Nicaragua as a ‘troika of tyranny,’ a phrase with echoes of George W. Bush’s ‘Axis of Evil’.

The European Union has roundly condemned the development. In a joint statement, EU High Representative Federica Mogherina and Trade Commissioner Cecilia Malmstrom said that the EU

‘reiterates its strong opposition to the extraterritorial application of unilateral Cuba-related measures that are contrary to international law. This decision is also a breach of the United States’ commitments undertaken in the EU-US agreements of 1997 and 1998, which have been respected by both sides without interruption since then. In those agreements, the US committed to waive Title III of the Helms-Burton Act and the EU, inter alia, suspended its case in the World Trade Organisation against the US.’

The statement went on to say that the EU will ‘consider all options at its disposal to protect its legitimate interests, including in relation to its WTO rights and through the use of the EU Blocking Statute,’ which ‘prohibits the enforcement of US courts judgements relating to Title III of the Helms-Burton Act within the EU, and allows EU companies sued in the US to recover any damage through legal proceedings against US claimants before EU courts.’