The ghosts of colonial history returned to haunt European and Latin American leaders at their summit in Brussels.

For the guests, four hundred years of European colonial rule, economic exploitation and slavery was front of mind. For the hosts, it was Russia’s war on Ukraine in the here and now. 

The divergence in views was so profound that the two sides struggled to align their thinking at their first summit in eight years — especially to find words to condemn Russia’s war of aggression in their closing communiqué.

That made the two-day gathering frustrating for all concerned — but especially for leaders of the EU’s newest member states from Eastern Europe, which have their own bitter memories of Soviet imperial rule and Russian aggression.

“It is actually a war of colonization,” Latvian Prime Minister Krišjānis Kariņš said of the 16-month-old Ukraine conflict. 

“There is a former colonizer, Russia, and a former colony, Ukraine. And the former overlord is trying to take back their one-time possession. I think that many countries around the world can relate to that.”

Despite the pre-summit rhetoric highlighting the two continents’ shared values, EU leaders struggled to persuade the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (CELAC) — which includes traditional allies of Moscow such as Nicaragua, Cuba and Venezuela — to clearly condemn Russia’s war.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy — a regular guest in Brussels — wasn’t invited this time. Wrangling over the wording in their joint declaration delayed the end of the meeting by hours as leaders sought to bridge the gaps. In the end, only Nicaragua dissented.

“No one intends to lecture anyone,” said European Council President Charles Michel, seeking to placate his guests. “This is not how it works, we have a lot of respect for those countries, for the traditions, for the culture, and the idea is always to engage in a spirit of mutual respect.”

Four hundred years

Spain, which holds the rotating presidency of the Council of the EU, has its eyes on Latin America and likes to emphasize the close cultural and linguistic ties between the two. 

But those links hark back to Spain — and Europe’s — colonial past. The Spanish kingdom colonized much of Latin America starting in 1493 and, over the next 400 years, acquired vast wealth by exploiting its lands and people. The European slave trade also forcibly transported millions of Africans into slavery in Latin America and the Caribbean.

While European leaders hoped to ease geopolitical tensions, their Latin American counterparts came to the table with a clear message: Defining relations today means addressing and rectifying past injustices — especially as the EU looks once again to the resource-rich region, this time to power its green transition.

The prime minister of Saint Vincent and the Grenadines — a small island state that heads up the 33-nation group — called for talks on economic reparations for colonization and enslavement. 

“Resources from the slave trade and from slavery helped to fuel the industrial revolution that has laid the basis for a lot of the wealth within Western Europe,” Ralph Gonsalves told a small group of reporters on Tuesday.

This was part of his argument for a plan to “to repair the historical legacies of underdevelopment resulting from native genocide and the enslavement of African bodies,” as he said on Monday ahead of the summit.

Trade tensions

Trade talks between the EU and Mercosur — which groups four of Latin America’s big economies — also reflected the broader tensions over what it really means for Europe to start afresh in a relationship of equals.

Beyond a cursory mention of a Mercosur deal in the final statement, talks with Brazil, Argentina, Uruguay and Paraguay were kept on the sidelines despite previous hopes that the summit could inject new energy into negotiations on wrapping up a trade deal.

European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen did, however, say after the summit that “our ambition is to … conclude [at] the latest by the end of this year.”

Industry and civil society have fundamentally different interpretations around how much — or how little — the deal would help put the countries on equal footing with their European partners.

For businesses, the deal needs to happen to ensure the region remains on the EU’s political and economic map. 

“For us, the [trade] agreements are important. We need stability and don’t want to be at the mercy of political changes,” said Luisa Santos of the industry lobby group BusinessEurope.

But NGOs don’t see it that way. “Any proposal that leaves the region as a mere provider of natural resources for the benefit of the one percent in the region, big corporations and rich countries is business as usual,” said Hernán Saenz from the NGO Oxfam.

Resource craze

Sealing the Mercosur deal has gained importance for the EU, which is banking on the resource-rich region to power the wind turbines and electric vehicles it needs to meet its climate targets. 

Brazil is the largest exporter of strategic raw materials to the EU by volume, while the “lithium triangle” spanning Chile, Argentina and Bolivia hosts about half of the world’s lithium reserves. As part of the summit, Brussels and Chile signed a new memorandum of understanding on raw materials. 

But the EU’s new appetite for those metals and minerals evoques those dark memories of Spanish conquistadors who set out to dominate large parts of South America — in the name of god, glory and, not least, gold, fueling an economic boom back home while stripping Latin America of its riches.

While von der Leyen on Monday announced Brussels will pump over €45 billion into the region through its Global Gateway program — for infrastructure projects that, at least in part, will also benefit the EU’s private sector — Europe is coming late to the party in a region where China has already expanded its influence.

And raw materials partnerships today, the region’s countries emphasized, cannot be based on a model where resource-rich countries mine the valuable resources — often under poor environmental and working conditions — only for them to be shipped abroad for processing and manufacturing, making them reliant on imports for finished products. 

“This was the first time that we had the opportunity to discuss in such clear terms a mechanism that would take us away from extractivism in Latin America,” Argentina’s President Alberto Fernández said after the summit.

“It took five centuries, but we managed it — I’m saying that half in jest, but we have at last succeeded.”

Camille Gijs and Barbara Moens contributed reporting.