Let us begin with the figures. With some €35 billion in funding over the 2021-2027 period, Spain is the third-largest beneficiary of European cohesion policy, behind Poland and Italy. Within Spain, Ceuta and Melilla, incorporated into the Union’s territory as Spanish autonomous cities since Madrid joined in 1986, benefit from these funds—in Ceuta, the current ERDF program alone amounts to €32 million—as well as from a largely exceptional European regime, particularly in tax and customs matters.
In addition to these cohesion policies come funds specifically devoted to immigration and borders. Over the same 2021-2027 period, Spain is receiving more than €1.5 billion through the three European funds dedicated to asylum and migration, borders and internal security. This summer, the European Commissioner announced €114 million in emergency aid, around €28 million of which was specifically earmarked for Ceuta. The bill is expected to rise further, with the Spanish government having since requested reinforcements from Frontex, Europol and the European Union Agency for Asylum. Territorial cohesion, social inclusion, reception, migration control and border surveillance: for four decades, European solidarity with Madrid has been written into very concrete budget lines.
The second cost is political, and it comes at the worst possible time. The Ceuta crisis has reopened the migration divide that the new European Pact on Migration and Asylum, which entered into application on June 12, 2026, believed it had healed. After years of negotiations and divisions, Europeans had managed to strike a balance between two principles—responsibility on the part of states located on the external borders and solidarity from the other member states—while developing a strategy of partnerships with countries of origin and transit, foremost among them Morocco. On August 1, at the initiative of Italy and Denmark, twenty-two member states sent a joint letter to European leaders calling for an emergency meeting. The text also explicitly referred to national regularization policies as a possible “pull factor,” a criticism aimed directly at Madrid.
In response, Pedro Sánchez invoked European solidarity and reproached his neighbors for attacking Spain rather than supporting it in the face of pressure on an external border of the Union. When the Europeans finally met on August 4, they chose to project unity, both in their solidarity with Spain and in the confidence placed in Morocco—the Commission welcoming cooperation with Rabat. The Irish presidency reiterated that external borders were a “shared responsibility.” But a majority of member states above all called for a tougher line: stronger external borders, a crackdown on smugglers, faster returns and deeper cooperation with third countries, with Italy reviving the idea of creating hubs in safe third countries... A matter of days was enough to expose the limits of the Pact and reopen the migration debate for the remainder of the institutional term.
Above all, behind this façade of unity, the Ceuta crisis raises a fundamental question: how far should European solidarity go? And who should bear the cost when a member state shirks its responsibilities? Solidarity among member states is one of the European Union’s fundamental principles. When a country suffers a natural disaster or external aggression, its neighbors come to its aid. But solidarity cannot mean making irresponsibility a collective responsibility. That is the entire difference between helping a state confronted with a situation it did not choose and asking twenty-six partners to shoulder indefinitely the consequences of national political choices.
Giorgia Meloni’s Italy, faced with mass arrivals in Lampedusa, demanded European solidarity while advocating a more restrictive common migration policy. Pedro Sánchez’s Spain, by contrast, champions a singular and lax approach to migration: the mass regularization of irregular migrants, Supreme Court case law limiting the use of immediate pushbacks at the Ceuta and Melilla borders... These are, of course, sovereign choices. But sovereignty entails responsibility. The EU is not an insurance mechanism in which political decisions remain national while their costs automatically become collective. Why would a government deny itself a politically rewarding policy if its consequences can be spread across twenty-seven states?
The question is all the more pressing in Ceuta because European solidarity there is already massive. If the Union finances, protects and supports this border in Africa, it is because its member states regard Ceuta and Melilla as integral parts of Spanish territory and, as such, as Europe’s external borders. Madrid would be wrong, however, to take that support permanently for granted. By repeatedly asking its partners to pool the consequences of reckless migration choices, Spain could ultimately weaken the European consensus that currently surrounds the presidios. The risk is not that European governments will collectively challenge their Spanish status tomorrow, but that some states, political parties or currents of opinion may begin to ask: why should Europe indefinitely finance and protect African borders when Spain itself is increasingly unwilling to shoulder the constraints that come with them? In this context, Madrid should have every interest in preserving rather than testing the political solidarity of its European partners. Neither Morocco nor the European Union is there to serve as Spain’s concierge.
