Marking the International Day for Remembrance of the Victims of Slavery and the Transatlantic Slave Trade, the European Union used the UN General Assembly platform on 25 March to pair historical remembrance with a renewed call to confront modern slavery, forced labour and racial discrimination. The statement, delivered in New York on behalf of the EU and its Member States, framed the legacy of the transatlantic slave trade not as a closed chapter of history, but as a continuing moral and political challenge.
Speaking at the commemorative plenary of the UN General Assembly, Ambassador Hedda Samson, Deputy Head of the Delegation of the European Union to the United Nations, said the transatlantic slave trade remained “an unparalleled tragedy” that lasted more than three centuries and subjected millions of Africans to “unspeakable atrocities.” The statement was issued on behalf of the EU and its Member States, with several candidate countries and European partners also aligning themselves with it, including North Macedonia, Montenegro, Serbia, Albania, Moldova, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Georgia, Andorra and San Marino.
The annual UN observance has a clear institutional purpose: to keep the memory of the transatlantic slave trade alive while encouraging reflection on its long-term consequences. The United Nations notes that 25 March was designated as the annual day of remembrance by General Assembly resolution 62/122, following earlier recognition of the scale and duration of slavery and the slave trade.
What gave the EU’s intervention particular weight this year was its insistence that remembrance must be linked to present-day policy. The statement said the wrongs of the past cannot be undone, but argued that governments must still address their enduring consequences by dismantling barriers and confronting disparities that continue to affect the descendants of those subjected to slavery. It also called for continued efforts to bring greater public understanding to the history of slavery, its causes, and its long afterlife in institutions and societies.
From historical memory to present-day law
The EU also used the occasion to draw a direct line between the history of slavery and contemporary forms of exploitation. The statement warned that, despite universal legal prohibitions, slavery and slavery-like practices still persist in forms such as trafficking in persons, forced labour and other forms of modern slavery. That broader framing reflects a growing international tendency to connect historical remembrance with current supply chains, labour standards and anti-trafficking enforcement.
To support that message, the EU pointed to its own legal framework. The statement referenced the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights, which prohibits slavery, forced labour and trafficking in human beings, and highlighted the Union’s new forced-labour rules. Those rules were formally adopted in late 2024 and prohibit products made with forced labour from being placed on, made available in, or exported from the EU market.
The scale of the problem remains severe. In the background to that legislation, the Council of the European Union cited an estimated 27.6 million people working in forced labour conditions worldwide, across industries and continents. That figure helps explain why the EU’s remarks in New York did not stay limited to ceremonial remembrance, but moved quickly toward enforcement, trade and rights protection.
Anti-racism also at the centre
The statement also placed slavery remembrance within the wider struggle against racism and racial discrimination. The EU reaffirmed its commitment to implementing the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination and referred to the Durban Declaration and Programme of Action, which marks its 25th anniversary this year. It also noted that the European Union had convened its annual anti-racism conference just last week.
That reference was not incidental. The European Commission’s Anti-Racism Strategy 2026-2030, presented earlier this year, forms part of a broader “Union of Equality” approach bringing together Member States, civil society organisations, parliamentarians and international bodies in a joint effort against racism.
In political terms, the EU’s message in New York was broader than a commemorative speech. It suggested that remembrance is meaningful only if it informs present policy: in schools and public memory, in anti-discrimination frameworks, in trade rules, and in action against trafficking and forced labour. That does not resolve every debate around history, accountability or redress. But it does show the EU trying to place the issue firmly within today’s human-rights agenda rather than treating it solely as a matter of the past.
For The European Times, the speech also fits into a wider pattern of EU and UN language that increasingly links historical injustices with present-day rights protections. As this publication noted in an earlier report, international remembrance efforts have repeatedly stressed that honouring the victims of the slave trade is inseparable from confronting exploitation that still survives in modern forms.
