The European Union, which once launched a lawsuit to try to break the U.S. economic embargo on Cuba, said it still wanted the blockade lifted but it was prepared to wait. The United States and Cuba agreed on Wednesday to restore diplomatic ties after more than 50 years and U.S. President Barack Obama said he was ending what he called a rigid and outdated policy of isolating Cuba. Obama has wide executive powers to further open up to Cuba, and the White House wants to see the trade embargo lifted by the time Obama leaves office in 2017. But he will not be able to remove it entirely without Congress agreeing. "This is obviously not something that would happen tomorrow. And we can foresee certain complications, but that would be a good thing, we would welcome that," EU Trade Commissioner Cecilia Malmstrom told a news conference in Geneva. The embargo has helped keep a lid on Cuba's trade, with imports reaching only $7 billion last year against $3.1 billion of exports. China, Spain, Brazil, Canada and Mexico were its top suppliers. Machinery, cereals and electrical equipment were its biggest imports by value. The EU challenged the embargo in 1996, launching a trade dispute at the World Trade Organization against the U.S. Helms-Burton law, which took aim at non-U.S. companies that did business with Cuba. A panel of adjudicators was appointed but the EU suddenly backed down, a decision WTO experts say was prompted by fears that Washington would invoke the national security defense -- a legitimate WTO get-out clause that has never yet been used. This week's thawing of relations could erode the case for such a national security defense, putting the embargo at risk of a new legal challenge if the U.S. Congress declines to lift it. "If relations are normalized by the Obama administration, that is, at the executive level, the national security justification for Congress' embargo weakens," said Joost Pauwelyn, an expert on WTO law and professor of international law at the Graduate Institute in Geneva. But he said such a move was unlikely for several years. Asked whether the EU might renew its legal challenge of the trade embargo if Congress declined to remove it, Malmstrom said: "It is a little bit too premature to draw conclusions." (Reuters)