Cooperation between the EU and Cuba for economic and productive reforms. The challenges of economic reform in Cuba

Monografías CIDOB nº. 78 

Since the start of the 1990s and the socialist bloc’s collapse, Cuba has striven to redefine the country’s economic model and reset its system of external relations. Numerous changes have been made over those three decades, and yet no satisfactory pathway has been found for the economy’s future progress. The anxieties caused by an increasingly adverse international environment, a global economic slowdown, a strategic partner in decline and an increasingly hostile powerful neighbour seem to favour those advocating an inward economic turn over those promoting a renewed reforming thrust. A stocktake of the last three decades of Cuban economic crisis reveals an exhausting course of partial and fragmentary reforms that have achieved limited success. It is in this context that the European Union decided to support the Jean Monnet Network, which brings researchers together from Europe and Cuba to work on Cuba’s current predicament and the prospects of more active and profitable relations with the European Union. The network also seeks to establish collaborative, understanding relationships between the academic communities on both sides to encourage a more shared vision of existing problems and promote the exchange of methodologies and analytical approaches. Cooperation between the EU and Cuba for economic and productive reform: The challenges of economic reform in Cuba is the fruit of these efforts. It is a volume that seeks to unite diverse and complementary contributions on the challenges of the Cuban economic situation, the experience gained in the reform so far and some tentative ideas for possible future actions. This volume’s engagement with the relevant issues in the relationship between Cuba’s economic reforms and its framework of relations with the EU is by no means exhaustive. But the six chapters presented here contain enough interesting material to demonstrate that joint academic endeavour can help better understand the Cuban economy’s complex situation and shed light on some of the parameters that will frame future reform decisions.

ISBN:  978-84-92511-89-1

Keywords: Cuba, foreign relations, Cuban economic situation, European Union, economic reform