Hemisphere watchHelms-Burton’s Title III: Impact of inching towards implementation
The Trump administration’s recent suspension of the Title III right-of-action provision of the Cuban Liberty & Democratic Solidarity (LIBERTAD) Act of 1996 (more commonly referred to as the Helms-Burton law) has put traficekrs dealing in stolen U.S. properties on notice. The move foreshadows a fundamental shift in U.S. policy toward Havana. If this historic opportunity to right past wrongs is squandered, however, then the same muddled, “business as usual” approach toward Cuba will prevail, permitting an open season for trafficking in the stolen properties of American citizens in Cuba.
I. Introduction
The Trump administration’s recent unprecedented hyper-shortened suspension of the Title III right-of-action provision of the Cuban Liberty & Democratic Solidarity (LIBERTAD) Act of 1996 (more commonly referred to as the Helms-Burton law) has sent shock waves of both elation and concern among those that typically follow these issues. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo’s certification bluntly warning traffickers about dealing in stolen U.S. properties, and citing this nefarious practice for the economic lifeline that it provides to the Cuban regime, foreshadow a fundamental shift in U.S. policy toward Havana.
A. Europe’s position. First, a bit of historical background … If one were to even partially believe the ubiquitous howls of protest from among the community of international legal experts upon its initial passage, the Helms-Burton law, and particularly its most controversial Title III, this legislation would have mostly up-ended the established world order as we have come to know it. Accompanied by sanctimonious cries of “extraterritoriality”, the European Union threatened to sue the United States at the World Trade Organization over this particular act of Congress, which resulted in the unratified 1998 “E.U.– U.S. Accords”, whereby the U.S. specifically committed not to enforce Helms-Burton’s Title III’s private right-of-action and Title IV’s visa revocation provisions against European nationals, although these traffickers constitute the vast majority of the Cuban regime’s current business partners in properties stolen from American citizens. In exchange, the EU was to somewhat vaguely: (i) “seek to deter” their companies’ investment only in Cuban properties “nationalized in violation of international law”; and (ii) assist in the creation of a non-binding “internet-based registry” of allegedly confiscated property claims, neither of which was ever actually implemented.