The discrediting of the EU in the Ceuta crisis

BarcelonaThe joint letter signed by the Prime Ministers of Italy and Denmark, Giorgia Meloni and Mette Frederiksen, in favor of creating deportation centers for immigrants in third countries is the latest episode of how European division and internal interests are eroding the European Union and turning migration policy into a political battleground between different European governments. Aside from the fact that it is deeply striking that the social democrat Frederiksen adopts the entire discourse of the extreme right on migration, from linking it to crime and sexual assault to the need to protect Christian culture, it is evident that this is a skillful move by Meloni in her confrontation with the Spanish Prime Minister, Pedro Sánchez, following the Ceuta crisis and the decision by Rome – and later Madrid – to impose border controls on their respective citizens.

Throughout this crisis, stronger leadership from the European Union has been lacking, especially from Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, who has disappeared. This time, neither the coordination achieved, for example, during the pandemic nor the common stance defended against Trump's tariffs has been seen anywhere. One can disagree with Spain's migration policy, obviously, but using a massive assault on Europe's southern border to engage in demagoguery about the Schengen area, as Meloni does, or to insist on the discourse of hatred towards immigrants, as governments like Denmark's do, does not help find a solution, but rather complicates everything even more. And it is deeply regrettable that neither Meloni nor Frederiksen dedicate a single line to the hundreds of people who died trying to enter Europe via Ceuta or the thousands who die every year in the Mediterranean.

The EU member states must wash their dirty laundry at home and negotiate a common position that includes, also, helping countries that suffer more pressure on their borders, such as Italy, Greece and Spain. Because countries like Morocco and Turkey are specialists in exploiting these divisions for their own benefit. The idea of subcontracting third countries to host mass deportation centers may sound good to some people, but experience shows that it has many legal difficulties, is expensive, and is not a long-term solution. And as long as it is not Spain, but the European Union, that finds a way to pressure Morocco, this country will have the upper hand due to its ability to provoke migratory crises, influence the Spanish and European political debate, and derive the consequent particular benefits by using its own people, whom it condemns to poverty and lack of expectations.

In any case, it is obvious that Pedro Sánchez has been left alone, in his own way, defending the southern border of Europe because no country has offered any kind of help, not even humanitarian. But anti-immigration European governments are very mistaken if they think that with a PP-Vox government things would be different. The problem will not evaporate and the solution will continue to be the same: a common European position.