EU pushes colonial reparations without naming Spain

Brussels puts colonial reparations on the agenda

A draft resolution headed to the European Parliament's development committee urges the EU to "urgently address and reverse" the impacts of European colonialism and support a reparations program for slavery. The document, previewed on Wednesday, December 6 by The Guardian, marks the first formal attempt to place this issue on the community agenda. Spain is not mentioned in the text. The Caribbean, Africa, and Latin America appear instead. This alone provides material for weeks of controversy.

What the draft exactly demands

The text argues that the EU has made "no concerted effort to acknowledge, address, and rectify" the lasting effects of colonialism and calls for creating a permanent forum for restorative justice. It adds that the European Commission must commission and publish a report on how to acknowledge the histories and legacies of European colonialism.

Michael McEachrane, the UN rapporteur for the permanent forum on Afro-descendants, sets the framework: 500 years of European colonialism and imperialism, with a figure that looms over the entire matter. In the 1930s, nearly 90% of the world had been colonized by European countries. His conclusion is that the EU must lead reparative processes, including climate justice, because developing countries, representing 80% of the world population, have contributed least to environmental crises.

This link between climate and colonialism is black and white in the resolution. Developed colonizing nations contributed more to emissions; developing countries are more affected. German MEP Pierrette Herzberger-Fofana, from The Greens and the Free European Alliance, presented the text on Thursday to the development committee and wants to process it as an emergency resolution in the coming weeks. She also calls for revising European textbooks to better explain the slave trade and colonialism.

The precedent of the EU-Celac declaration

This does not come out of nowhere. Earlier that same year, the EU issued a joint statement with leaders of the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States recognizing that the historical slave trade had inflicted "incalculable suffering" and suggesting the need for reparations for what it described as a "crime against humanity."

The month before the draft, the African Union agreed to join Caribbean nations to form a "united front" to persuade European countries to pay for "massive historical crimes." What remains off the table is the uncomfortable part: what form that restorative justice would take. No figures, no deadlines, no one paying.

The counterargument: the viceroyalties were not colonies

The most repeated Spanish response denies the premise. It is argued that overseas territories were never colonies but viceroyalties, as much Spain as the peninsula, and that there was no plunder but a transplanted civilization that left three centuries, money, and energy. As proof, mixed marriages approved by the Catholic Monarchs in 1510 are cited, along with current ethnic estimates: in Mexico, 81% of the population is native-descended; in Peru, 88%. It is difficult to fit this into a genocide narrative, it is argued.

Belgium, the Netherlands, and British plunder

The other major axis is comparison. Questions arise as to why the focus does not point to the Belgian Congo, the Dutch, Indonesia, India, or British plunder. The figure repeated in this context is that of the Congo: between 10 and 15 million Congolese, supported by period photographs. The conclusion drawn by much of the staff is that Europe uses Spain to camouflage its own excesses.

The slave trade from other routes is also mentioned, that leaving Africa north and east, and the suspicion that reparations demands respond more to a social engineering agenda than a historical claim.

Was Latin America richer than Europe in 1800?

Here the debate becomes economic. Some argue that at the time of independence, the viceroyalties of Peru and New Spain had a higher level of development than peninsular Spain and stronger economies, something incompatible with the narrative of an extractive regime. It is even pointed out that the main Spanish shipyard was in America, as was the first railway built on Spanish soil, and one wonders if anyone imagines the main British shipyard in India.

The objection is equally blunt: presenting a colonial Latin America richer than Europe during the industrial revolution does not hold. Without statistical series on the table, neither position goes beyond assertion.

The text does not define what form reparations would take, sets no amount, and does not even name the states that should pay. Everything hangs on a report the European Commission has not yet commissioned. Without a mechanism, figures, or clear competence, it is a discussion about history with a bill no one has calculated. And there, exactly there, the analysis stalls.