In El Salto Extremadura, Drs. Naia Ormaza Zulueta and David Boyd called out Spain’s double standard of exporting thousands of tonnes of pesticides banned in the EU to the Global South, prioritizing commercial profit over health and biodiversity abroad.
Exportation is continuing despite the European Commission’s commitment in 2020 to end this practice within the framework of the Chemical Sustainability Strategy. Some countries have begun to act independently: France was the first to ban these exports, with Belgium following suit.
“But in Spain, there’s not been a single legislative debate or parliamentary initiatives,” says IRES postdoc and article co-author Naia Ormaza Zulueta. “All the pressure has come from civil society. In 2021, the Spanish government did endorse a commitment to end double standards at the EU Council. Five years later, it hasn’t taken a single step to fulfill it.”
And this is apparent in the map below, compiled by Ormaza Zulueta with data from the European Chemicals Agency. By March 2026, Spain had filed more than 1,000 requests to export hazardous chemicals. This is nearly 40 times the number recorded in 2004, highlighting a sharp rise in potentially dangerous exports.
That the EU needs a binding regulation prohibiting these exports is no longer up for debate. But Brussels’ paralysis is no excuse for national inaction; political will has already been demonstrated in other cases (France, Belgium). Nothing prevents Spain from ending the export of substances it considers too dangerous for its own population. Nor can it exert the necessary political pressure to get the European Union to do the same. The most disturbing thing about this system is not that it’s illegal, write Ormaza Zulueta and Boyd. It’s that it isn’t. Every authorization has its stamp, every notification its registration, every shipment its legal basis. No one breaks the rules. No one takes responsibility for the damage.
And tomorrow there will be new export requests, new shipping containers, new fields sprayed on the other side of a border that, for the poison, doesn’t exist. The injustice isn’t hidden. It simply has all the paperwork in order.
Read the full Spanish language article here.