The Ceuta crisis is an early test of Europe’s solidarity between it’s members, and so far they are not doing great. In the aftermath of Spain’s border crisis with Morocco, where around 72K migrants from Morocco surged into Ceuta, a Spanish enclave in North Africa, other EU countries have instead blamed Spain for the crisis, believing their lax attitude towards migration encouraged this mass migration. Italy, Finland, Czechoslovakia, and Denmark have all either called for Spain to harden its borders or took border control measures against Spain for this. Spain, in turn, has retaliated against Italy by placing border controls in return.
This, according to Finbarr Bermingham, has exposed vulnerabilities regarding solidarity against external issues. The EU’s members can easily turn on each other given internal self-interests. China current strategy of targeting EU countries individually to weaken a broad response against it therefore will continue to be effective against a broad response with EU-China issues. Indeed, given that other countries have blamed the Ceuta crisis on Spain, which is typically more friendly to China than the rest of the bloc, this might further encourage Spain to reject trade measures against China.
The Ceuta crisis also isn’t the first time individual EU members have weakened a collective response for self-interest; Germany voted against EV duties on China, France lobbied for retaliatory alcohol tariffs on US to be removed to protect it’s own wine industries. All these incidents show that EU members may not be willing to absorb costs for each other in solidarity.
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The Ceuta crisis is an early test of Europe’s solidarity between it’s members, and so far they are not doing great. In the aftermath of Spain’s border crisis with Morocco, where around 72K migrants from Morocco surged into Ceuta, a Spanish enclave in North Africa, other EU countries have instead blamed Spain for the crisis, believing their lax attitude towards migration encouraged this mass migration. Italy, Finland, Czechoslovakia, and Denmark have all either called for Spain to harden its borders or took border control measures against Spain for this. Spain, in turn, has retaliated against Italy by placing border controls in return.
This, according to Finbarr Bermingham, has exposed vulnerabilities regarding solidarity against external issues. The EU’s members can easily turn on each other given internal self-interests. China current strategy of targeting EU countries individually to weaken a broad response against it therefore will continue to be effective against a broad response with EU-China issues. Indeed, given that other countries have blamed the Ceuta crisis on Spain, which is typically more friendly to China than the rest of the bloc, this might further encourage Spain to reject trade measures against China.
The Ceuta crisis also isn’t the first time individual EU members have weakened a collective response for self-interest; Germany voted against EV duties on China, France lobbied for retaliatory alcohol tariffs on US to be removed to protect it’s own wine industries. All these incidents show that EU members may not be willing to absorb costs for each other in solidarity.