EU ice is melting?

Cuban Cartoon: "Clearly my love, I know that you like my position, but everyone is commenting that the only thing that I have in common with anypone is with you"

News has reached me that European Union Foreign Ministers agreed on 19 November to "explore the possibility" of drawing up a new co-operation accord with Cuba that would supplant the 1996 Current Position that governs relations with Cuba.
Spain’s Deputy Foreign Minister, Gonzalo de Benito, said:“Starting now, what the [European] Commission is going to do is to establish some guidelines so that this cooperation accord may be negotiated, representing a step forward in the relationship between the European Union and Cuba,”
The EU sees the recent chnages in Cuba as “a positive evolution”, he added.
This is welcome news and means that some form of EU-Cuba association agreement might eventually be agreed. Cuba is the only country in Latin America that the EU has no formal relationship with.
The EU has previously argued that its unilateral ‘Common Position’ “encourages dialogue with the Cuban authorities to promote respect for human rights, progress towards pluralist democracy and economic reforms”. However, officials and some Member States believe that this policy has been a failure and that there is a need to begin to put in place the possibility of bilateral agreement.