Brussels Playbook
By SEBASTIAN STARCEVIC
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GOOD MORNING. This is Sebastian Starcevic, POLITICO’s EU politics reporter, honored to be in the Playbook driver’s seat for the first week of August.
In today’s Playbook:
— Spain’s migration crisis reveals just how far Pedro Sánchez has fallen.
— The EU’s ombudswoman sounds the alarm about secrecy in Brussels.
— Faces in the crowd: Ursula von der Leyen, Teresa Anjinho, Pedro Sánchez, Alexander Stubb, Kristen Michal, Emily O’Reilly and more.
On today’s Brussels Playbook Podcast: Zoya and Ian unpack the EU’s scramble to respond to the Ceuta crisis, and what it says about how other leaders feel about Spain’s prime minister.
DRIVING THE DAY
SÁNCHEZ STANDS ALONE: Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez has learned a hard truth over the past few days: Once one of the EU’s most charismatic and influential leaders, he is now effectively a pariah in the bloc.
EU leaders unleashed fury on Madrid after tens of thousands of migrants crossed from Morocco into the Spanish territory of Ceuta last week, leaving at least 72 people dead. And the row is far from over, even though most of the roughly 60,000 migrants had returned to Morocco by Sunday night and none entered the EU mainland.
Over the weekend, 22 leaders signed a letter taking aim at Spain’s migration policies for undermining the bloc’s security. Estonian Prime Minister Kristen Michal told Playbook that Madrid had created “incentives” for illegal migration through its amnesty policies. “Europe cannot allow large-scale illegal entry into the European Union,” he argued.
Sánchez hit back with a letter of his own calling the bloc’s lack of solidarity “selfish” — after pointing out on X that Italy and Greece have received more irregular migrants than Spain.
Group therapy session? EU ambassadors will hold an emergency meeting to discuss the crisis at 2:30 p.m., followed by a video conference of the bloc’s home affairs ministers tomorrow. Rome intends to push ministers to speed up work on migrant return hubs outside the EU, La Repubblica reports.
Iratxe García, the Spanish leader of the Socialists and Democrats group in the European Parliament, told Playbook it is “particularly regrettable” that “moderate” parties and leaders had “sought to exploit the situation for political gain” and failed to show solidarity with Spain.
Brussels keeps its distance: Commission officials stressed that the institution had been in contact with Madrid “at all levels, both technical and political.” But President Ursula von der Leyen didn’t travel to Spain or publicly say whether she’d spoken to Sánchez, instead issuing a statement calling the chaotic scenes in Ceuta “unacceptable.”
Spain is not the first European country to regularize migrants. As one southern European diplomat pointed out, Portugal did much the same under past governments without such a “huge pushback” from the EU, though it has since tightened its rules. But the scale of the reaction to Ceuta shows how thin Europe’s patience has worn with Sánchez.
Leaders’ frustration had been building long before the first migrants swam to Ceuta’s shores — and not just on migration. Sánchez has infuriated center-right and center-left leaders at the Council table by dragging his feet on defense spending and pursuing a softer line on China.
Spain’s low defense spending has particularly irked leaders, the diplomat said. Appearing on a Munich Security Conference panel alongside the Danish and Finnish leaders this year, Sánchez called for a “moral” rearmament rather than a nuclear one and defended Spain’s refusal to meet NATO’s 5 percent target by 2035. Asked whether he bought the argument, Finland’s Alexander Stubb replied archly: “I’m buying a lot of defense equipment.”
Council calculus: Sánchez’s dwindling influence leaves progressives with even less sway at the Council table. The two other socialist leaders — the Danish and Maltese prime ministers — both signed the 22-leader letter.
The takeaway: At a moment when governments would typically close ranks and show solidarity, EU capitals have been quick to turn on Madrid — showing just how far Sánchez’s star has fallen.
BIG AND BREAKING
TRUMP’S TRADE THREATS:
Washington is threatening new tariffs on the EU but Brussels has a new strategy, per my colleagues Camille Gijs and Stefanie Bolzen — don’t take the bait.
ENERGY CRISIS:
Hungary’s leader Péter Magyar said the country faces a “critical” week after it was forced to shut down a nuclear power plant that generates 40 percent of its electricity, Elena Giordano reports.
BEIJING VS. BERLIN:
China helped transform Germany’s automakers into global giants, but now it’s forcing them into a brutal battle for survival, Jordyn Dahl writes.
LATEST IN THE MIDDLE EAST:
Donald Trump said the U.S. will hold fresh talks with Iran today after he called off planned strikes over the weekend, CNN reports.
NANI!? France is courting Saudi Arabian investors to fund an anime-themed attraction near Paris, according to Paul de Villepin.
FARAGE ON THE ROPES: Nigel Farage’s Reform UK is sliding in the polls — but don’t count the perennial underdog out just yet, Tim Ross writes.
WATCHDOG’S WARNING
OMBUDSWOMAN SPEAKS ON SECRECY:
The EU’s watchdog has sounded the alarm about “accountability-free zones” in the EU’s institutions and warned that mounting global crises cannot become an excuse for secrecy.
Dangerous territory: European Ombudswoman Teresa Anjinho told Playbook that as the European Commission takes on more powers and responsibilities in the face of threats, it is also exercising “more discretion” about what it tells the public — fueling a “huge surge of complaints” to her office.
No excuses: “Urgency is not a catch-all justification, particularly when you bypass important safeguards that exist there exactly to guarantee consistency and predictability,” she argued. “We cannot … have accountability-free zones.”
Case in point: The shortcomings of the EU’s access-to-documents rules, which let citizens request official files and papers, are a sign of “structural dysfunction” in the executive and unfit “for the 21st century,” Anjinho said, adding that more than a third of the complaints she receives are about transparency.
She hit out at officials who abuse legal exceptions to create “escape routes,” adding she is pushing for the regulation to be overhauled to “penalize refusal” when the institutions won’t hand over documents.
“I’m not advocating going back to a pre-crisis procedural orthodoxy,” Anjinho stressed. “It is important to adapt and we understand that. But we have to adapt without losing ourselves.”
Power behind the throne: Anjinho took over 18 months ago from Ireland’s Emily O’Reilly, a fierce critic of Ursula von der Leyen and what she called the “powerful consiglieri” who run the president’s cabinet.
Von der Leyen has been criticized in various quarters, from the European Parliament to civil society, for her centralization of power and shunning of scrutiny and was even accused of “maladministration” by O’Reilly amid the Pfizergate saga.
Survival at stake: Anjinho did not use von der Leyen’s name but called the executive’s “opacity” a threat to the EU itself. “We need to be faithful to the treaties and abide by the principles and values,” she said. “It is what guarantees the survival of the project and the survival of the institutions.”
TALK TO PLAYBOOK: On the Brussels Playbook Podcast, Zoya asked what’s the EU secret you’d want to uncover through an access-to-documents request? WhatsApp us on +32 491 050629 and listen from 7 a.m. to hear if we give you a shoutout.
BRUSSELS CORNER
WEATHER: Sunny. High of 35C.
LAST RIDE OF SUMMER? If you’ve already left Brussels for the August holidays, you might notice the streets look a little different when you’re back. The region has ordered shared scooters and bikes to be removed by Sept. 1, after a Belgian court annulled permits for free-floating fleets (but shared bikes at fixed stations will still be allowed).
NEW FINES: Starting this month, if you put your trash out at the wrong time you’ll have to cough up €200 per bag, after Brussels doubled its fee for polluters, Bruzz reports.
TOP OF THE PLAYBOOKS
Berlin: On summer break until Aug. 10.
London: Nigel Farage returns to center stage in Westminster today hoping to stop the Burnham bounce.
Paris: Former minister Xavier Bertrand is eyeing a center-right bid in next year’s presidential election — but it’s already a crowded field.
Washington: Democratic strategists say overlooked Puerto Rican voters could decide control of Congress in the midterms.
AGENDA
— EU ambassadors hold an emergency Coreper II meeting to discuss the Ceuta crisis at 2:30 p.m.
— Denmark begins its presidency of the U.N. Security Council for the month of August.
BIRTHDAYS
MEP Moritz Körner; former MEP Andrea Cozzolino; former Polish EU Ambassador Jarosław Starzyk; European Commission’s Pascaline Deuquet-Eenens; Ouest-France’s Fabien Cazenave; French Senator Annick Girardin; Meta’s Phillip Malloch.
Playbook is brought to you by POLITICO’s EU Politics team: Gerardo Fortuna, Nicholas Vinocur, Gabriel Gavin, Zoya Sheftalovich, Max Griera, Mari Eccles, Hanne Cokelaere and Sebastian Starcevic. And: reporters Ferdinand Knapp and Milena Wälde, editors Alex Spence and James Panichi, and producers Dean Southwell and Hugh Kapernaros.
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