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Every time Ceuta is targeted with one of Morocco’s hybrid attacks, and every time the lives of migrants are abused to pressure the Spanish government, someone always asks whether Spain and Morocco are heading for war.

They don’t care about the problems with this type of geopolitical posturing. They don’t care about the needless endangering and loss of human life. They don’t even care about who is doing what. They just want to posture in the news or on social media about how powerful Morocco is, how powerful Spain is, and how x, y or z could annihilate a, b and c in retribution for perceived or real slights.

Naturally, with the ongoing aftermath of the Ceuta crisis, the question resurfaced within hours of the July crossings, with journalists and keyboard warriors alike spreading their messages of peace and love across the internet; and once a US congressional committee waded into the question of Spanish sovereignty, it stopped being confined to comment sections.

Naturally, it also happens to be the wrong question, or rather it collapses two separate questions into one. Whether Rabat will keep using migration as leverage over Madrid is not in doubt: it has done so four times since 2021 and will continue to engage in hybrid warfare. Whether either government would risk actual armed conflict over two North African cities is a different matter, and the historical record answers it plainly.

None of what follows is a celebration of European or Spanish strength, or an invitation to read the numbers as a scoreboard. That framing is exactly the problem it's meant to correct. Morocco has nationalists who profit from portraying Rabat as an unafraid rising power. Washington has acquired its own, who have adopted Ceuta as a front in a culture war that has nothing to do with it, using the crisis as a purely punitive attack on Pedro Sánchez. Meanwhile, Europe's far right needs a foreign threat to sell domestic politics it otherwise couldn't. All three are currently misreading, or deliberately misrepresenting, a pattern of coercion that has stayed remarkably contained for two decades. Setting that record straight, not tallying tanks, is the point of what follows.

To begin with, it’s possible to set up frameworks to better understand the likelihood or probability of a conflict, but it’s not bulletproof and it’s not a crystal ball. The history of geopolitics is filled with rash decisions that make little sense and are looked upon in the eyes of history with bafflement and confusion.

Any question about whether two states might fight, with all of the myriad of reasons, benefits from being broken into smaller stages rather than treated as binary yes or no.

A useful model runs on four rungs:

• Diplomatic pressure – Protest notes, recalled ambassadors, sharpened rhetoric. The baseline state of any contested-sovereignty relationship, present continuously between Madrid and Rabat since independence. It escalates only when one side judges words are no longer being taken seriously

• Coercion short of force – A costly signal that stops short of combat, most often trade restrictions or, in this case, a loosened border. The clearest precedent is Belarus’s 2021 push of migrants toward Poland and Lithuania, which the European Council formally condemned as a “hybrid attack,” a label that has stuck for this kind of coercion ever since. The point isn’t the crossing itself but what it demonstrates: Rabat’s ability to impose real cost on Spain at will. This is where every Ceuta and Melilla crisis since 2021 has played out, and where each has been resolved once the signal landed

• Limited use of force – An operation small and reversible enough that neither side has to call it war, seizing an islet, a border skirmish, a naval intercept. Reaching this rung means coercion has failed to extract the concession sought, or one side judges the other won’t actually shoot back. Perejil in 2002 is the only time this ladder has been climbed this high, and it was resolved within days precisely because both sides moved fast to keep it there.

• Full-on interstate war – Mobilised forces, combat, contested territory. States arrive here only when no bargain both sides trust can be found, typically because one side doubts the other’s resolve, or because a closing window makes fighting now look better than fighting later. Neither condition holds between Madrid and Rabat: Spanish resolve has never been in doubt, and Morocco faces no closing window that rewards acting before talking. This rung has never been reached.

That “why” has a well-established answer in the study of interstate conflict. States rarely go to war because grievances accumulate past some threshold; they go to war when no bargain both sides prefer to fighting can be found and trusted.

Sometimes this can be because one side doubts the other’s resolve and miscalculates a fight it would have avoided had it known the truth. More often it’s a commitment problem: a rising power doubts a declining one will honour today’s terms once the balance shifts, or doubts that the opponent can defend itself with sufficient material or manpower that would prevent unacceptable losses.

So, it fights while the fighting is still favourable. Occasionally the prize itself can’t be split: a capital, a city, a holy site, a currency union, and no bargain exists that would allow complete ownership over the goal in the first place.

Morocco’s claim to Ceuta and Melilla clears this particular hurdle easily: sovereignty over an inhabited city isn’t divisible the way a trade dispute is, particularly not one found within what it considers to be its sovereign territory.

What Morocco has never fully cleared is the next two rungs on the ladder: Rabat has never doubted Madrid’s resolve to defend the enclaves with military force if necessary, and it has never faced a closing window that made waiting look riskier than acting now. Absent either failure, coercion below the threshold of force stays the rational choice, which is exactly what the record below shows it choosing, four times over.

Four crises since 2021, one weapon in two decades

The Perejil crisis is the exception that proves the rule. When Moroccan marines occupied the uninhabited islet off Ceuta in July 2002, Spain retook it within a week using a small commando unit during Operation Romeo-Sierra, without a single casualty on either side.

Washington, under more intellectual leadership than today, brokered a return to the pre-crisis status quo within days, and Madrid’s government publicly thanked the United States for its role, with ambassadors restored to their positions the following January. In over two decades of recurring friction between Madrid and Rabat, it remains the only episode that involved anyone firing up a helicopter or a potential risk of life rather than loosening a border fence.

Everything since then has stayed several rungs lower. In May 2021, Morocco relaxed border controls after Spain admitted Polisario Front leader Brahim Ghali for hospital treatment, and roughly 8,000 people crossed into Ceuta over two days. The dispute was resolved through policy rather than force: Madrid reversed its position on Western Sahara the following spring.

In June 2022, around 2,000 people attempted the Melilla fence; the official Moroccan toll rose from an initial 18 to 23 confirmed dead, with Moroccan human rights groups citing higher figures still. That crisis, too, resolved through diplomacy rather than escalation, arriving as it did a month after Rabat and Madrid had already patched up relations. A smaller episode followed in August 2024, when several hundred people used fog cover to swim into Ceuta.

Then came the most recent flashpoint in July 2026.

Spanish authorities said 72,000 people crossed over two days, considerably more than any previous episode, with at least 67 confirmed dead by the time Spain began installing a floating barrier off Tarajal beach. The toll continued climbing as recovery operations proceeded in both Spanish and Moroccan waters, reaching at least 141 dead by early August, more than double the initial count and Morocco’s deadliest migration disaster on record. The mechanism was the same as 2021: a loosened border, a diplomatic grievance behind it, a return to the status quo once the political point had been made. What was different was the scale, and, as it turned out, the audience watching from Washington.

Coercion is cheap, whereas war would not be

The reason Morocco reaches for migration and hybrid warfare rather than anything sharper is not squeamishness; it’s arithmetic.

Spain’s defence budget runs to roughly $34.5bn against Morocco’s $6.2bn, and that comparison understates the real gap between the two states: Spain is one of 27 EU member states bound by Article 42.7 of the Treaty on European Union, the bloc’s mutual defence clause. It has been invoked once, by France after the 2015 Paris attacks, and it does not trigger automatically.

However, the simple reality is that the EU-27 spent €418bn on defence in 2025 alone, more than seventy times what Morocco spends on its entire military in a year, and that is the backdrop against which any Moroccan planner has to weigh an escalation of the Perejil precedent.

The trade relationship tells the same story from a different angle. Morocco sends 22.5% of its exports to Spain alone, more than to any other country including France, and Spain has become Morocco’s largest African trading partner, worth over €22bn a year. Widen the lens to the EU as a whole and the exposure grows further still: total EU-Morocco goods trade reached €62bn in 2025, with Spain alone accounting for well over a third of Morocco’s trade with the bloc. Migration pressure is a lever Rabat can pull and release at will, deniable and reversible within days. Losing access to the Spanish or European market is neither, and Rabat has spent two decades demonstrating that it knows the difference.

None of this restraint is happening by accident, or out of pure strategic patience either. As I argued after the emergency Justice and Home Affairs meeting on 4 August, and discussed live with Dave Keating from Spain that same week, Brussels' instinct throughout this crisis has been damage control rather than accountability: a four-day reversal from criticising Madrid to closing ranks around it, Morocco never named in the official readout, and the Commission reportedly offering Rabat more money rather than answers.

That is not the behaviour of an actor confident enough to escalate. It is the behaviour of one that would rather pay to make a problem go away than find out what happens if it doesn't.

Congress didn’t arm Morocco. It told Rabat the claim now has friends

What actually shifted this summer sits in Washington rather than Rabat or Madrid. A House Appropriations Committee report accompanying the 2027 State Department funding bill stated that Ceuta and Melilla are “located in Moroccan territory,” the first time any chamber of the US Congress has cast doubt in writing on Spanish sovereignty over the enclaves.

The House passed the underlying bill 217 to 209 on 15 July, before the crossings began, and the report effectively carries no legal force. Official US policy has not moved: Washington still recognises the cities as Spanish. The same bill directs $40m toward Moroccan security programmes, well under 1% of Morocco’s own annual defence budget and not remotely enough to alter the balance described above.

What has changed is the relationship the report landed inside.

Spain and the United States have spent most of 2026 in their coldest situation in decades. In February, Sánchez refused US forces access to Spanish bases for the strikes on Iran and closed Spanish airspace to the aircraft involved, and in March, Trump ordered a halt to all trade with Spain, a threat that went unfulfilled but was never formally withdrawn either. Spain remains the only NATO member that has not committed to the alliance’s 5% of GDP spending target, which Sánchez has called “unreasonable and counterproductive,” and Madrid spent the same stretch deepening ties with Beijing, the prime minister’s fourth visit to China in four years came in April.

A brief thaw occurred in July: a cordial handshake at the World Cup final in New Jersey, after talks at a summit in Ankara, but this level of public friction doesn’t dissolve over one football match. A House committee willing to question Spanish sovereignty over Ceuta and Melilla isn’t an isolated event, it is a signal that is received very loudly by those who would benefit from it the most.

The military calculus hasn’t moved. What has moved is the political one. A claim that spent two decades confined to Rabat’s own rhetoric and a scattering of sympathetic think-tank essays has now appeared, in writing, inside a committee report of the world’s most powerful legislature.

Spain’s legal position is unaffected: it rests on possession predating the modern Moroccan state by centuries, and no US administration has changed its recognition of Spanish sovereignty due to the domino effect it would have across its alliances and relationships.

What Moroccan officials gained is a talking point they didn’t have in May, and what future advocates of the claim gained is an institutional citation to point to instead of an op-ed. Normalisation is a slower, cheaper form of leverage than anything involving a fence or a flag, and it is exactly the kind of leverage this Congress has shown itself willing to hand out.

The bill itself is still sitting with the Senate, unresolved, and no secretary of state under any recent administration has agreed to broker talks on the cities’ status, whatever a single House committee chooses to note in a report nobody outside Brussels and Rabat had heard of a year ago.

The question worth tracking from here is not whether Madrid and Rabat go to war over Ceuta, they will not, but whether this kind of language outlives the Trump administration that produced it. A House report is reversible. A precedent, once set, rarely is.

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Within 24 hours, Spain had returned the very large majority of the over 60,000 people who crossed from Morocco into Ceuta over 30 and 31 July, with, in the Council’s own assessment, no onward movement to mainland Spain or other member states.

This was a serious and genuinely impressive operational achievement: the crowd that arrived at the fence in a single day came close to Ceuta’s entire population of around 80,000. Guardia Civil and the army secured the perimeter, Madrid rapidly mobilised the extra capacity necessary to deal with the issue, and after calling the situation “unacceptable”, Commission President von der Leyen appointed two commissioners to help coordinate the European-level response, an acknowledgement that this was a shared European problem rather than a Spanish one.

And yet, as we’re used to by now, none of that stopped several fellow EU governments from treating Madrid, rather than Rabat, as the problem, with the common denominator being a right-wing lean and political desperation.

Zero solidarity, while the toll climbed

Within 24 hours of the breakthrough, and after the situation had effectively come to an end, Italy had imposed border checks on travellers arriving from Spain, and by the end of the week Italian officials were floating shutting Spain out of Schengen altogether.

France’s interior minister, meanwhile, ordered extra checks along the Pyrenees, a moderate step compared with what came next. Jordan Bardella, whose far-right Patriots for Europe group sits well to the right of most national governments in Brussels, wrote to Parliament President Roberta Metsola demanding an emergency debate on what he called the “failure of the European Union’s migration policies”.

Nigel Farage, that strange British man who made Brexit happen and who is allergic to both accountability and geography, told his own followers the crossings had “invaded” Ceuta, and warned, inaccurately, that the people involved would soon be crossing the Channel into Britain, a country that is not in Schengen and roughly a thousand kilometres from Ceuta.

And to add to the dramatic effect: some silly people from Fox News decided that Ceuta was actually in northern Spain, somewhere near Navarra and the Basque Country, because why not just transpose northern Africa into Europe for the sake of some clickbait and political capital.

By the time Pedro Sánchez called the reaction a “selfish, polarising and unlawful” response from European allies, the confirmed death toll of what appears to have been either hybrid warfare or sheer incompetence from the Moroccan government, had already risen from 67 on Friday to 72 by Sunday, according to Spain’s government delegate to Ceuta; the region’s own morgue reported 88 bodies received, while Morocco’s interior ministry, working from its own figures, confirmed just 11.

He was right, and the following week proved it.

A crisis made in Rabat, not Madrid

I’m not alone in reading this abhorrent situation this way. The European Council on Foreign Relations warned that failing to back Spain risks “encouraging Morocco and others to keep using migration as a tool of coercion”. Seen against that backdrop, Italy’s border checks and Bardella’s letter amounted to a reward for Rabat, delivered for free, by politicians who call themselves defenders of Europe’s borders and people, all while undermining the one member state that was actually single-handedly doing this while being stabbed in the back.

A four-day climbdown

By 4 August, when Irish minister Jim O’Callaghan convened an informal video conference of EU home affairs ministers, the ridiculous anti-Spanish posture had been completely reversed.

The same bloc that could not be bothered to show solidarity four days earlier now recorded that member states were united in expressing strong solidarity with Spain, commending the “swift and effective” Spanish response. Italy’s border checks were quietly dropped, and Bardella’s promised emergency debate never happened.

Notably, nobody but the most ridiculous far-right influencers brought up Schengen suspension again.

This reversal took four days and needed no real debate. Governments that were imposing border checks and floating Schengen suspension on 1 August were praising Spanish competence by the 4th, presumably because basic common sense and geographical knowledge were discovered.

The rising death toll and evidence of this being Morocco’s hybrid warfare against our Union also helped to go some way in rendering the original position politically untenable.

But, regardless of the positive result, we need to call it what it is: a cowardly climbdown, staged in public, by right-wing and panicked governments that picked the wrong target, used the wrong logic, and then had to unpick their own words on the record.

Knowing and not saying

Ministers committed to reinforcing returns and deepening partnerships with third countries, the same language used after every previous Ceuta crisis, and deferred anything harder to a further ministerial meeting and the European Council in October, ten weeks away.

Morocco is not named once in the readout, with this omission looking less like an information gap than a decision. Spanish media reported, citing security sources, that the National Intelligence Centre had warned the Interior Ministry several times of a possible mass crossing in the weeks beforehand, tied to Morocco’s Throne Day, but Interior Minister Fernando Grande-Marlaska has denied receiving any warning of a surge on that scale.

Either way, a Council communiqué drafted days after that story broke, and that still avoids the word Morocco, reads like a choice to keep a fragile but necessary relationship out of the public record rather than a genuine gap in what ministers understood.

No minister mentioned the Crisis and Force Majeure Regulation, the EU’s own framework for member states facing migration deliberately instrumentalised by a third state. Its relevant provisions became applicable on 1 July 2026, four weeks before Ceuta.

The Anti-Coercion Instrument is often raised alongside it, but that tool is built around trade and economic coercion rather than migration, a stretch to invoke here even though Brussels has spent this year weighing its first-ever use against Washington over Greenland. The instrumentalisation framework requires no such stretch: it exists for precisely this scenario, and nobody in the room on 4 August used it, or the word it was built to describe.

Spain’s bilateral dependence on Rabat, the same dependence that let a border be opened and closed like a tap in 2021 and again this July, is not on the table for reform either.

The anti-EU camp has humiliated itself into silence, and deservedly so. Rabat, the actual author of the crisis, has not yet been asked to answer for anything.

Not only this, but our Commission President, Ursula von der Leyen, has embarrassed herself as much as any of them.

That silence did not start with the ministers. The day before they convened, she had already answered the accountability question herself, in writing. Sánchez had complained privately to the Commission president on Saturday about the lack of solidarity from fellow member states; her reply, seen by Reuters, did not raise Rabat’s conduct at all. She, instead, proposed rewarding it.

Von der Leyen called Morocco “an important strategic partner” and offered to enhance early-warning systems and increase technical and financial support to the same government suspected of directing sixty thousand people into a crossing that had, by Monday, killed at least seventy-two of them. The Commission president who had called the crisis unacceptable on Friday spent Monday drafting a bigger cheque for the state she was too careful to name as its cause.

This is not diplomacy. It is reward.

She did not mention fisheries access under the EU-Morocco partnership, or attaching conditions to the cooperation funding Rabat already receives, both tools TFD flagged after the 2021 crisis. Nor did she raise the instrumentalisation framework her own Commission spent two years building for precisely this situation.

Every government that attacked Spain in public has already had to eat its words, in public, at the ministerial table. Von der Leyen never attacked anyone, and has faced no reckoning at all, because writing a cheque does not generate headlines the way a Schengen threat does. She had the authority to make Rabat pay for this. She chose to pay Rabat instead.

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We may finally be seeing the next step in the federalisation of the European Union.

Germany, France, Italy, Spain, the Netherlands and Poland have spent the last few weeks locked in negotiations behind closed doors. The conclusions are about to land in Berlin, where German finance minister Lars Klingbeil is expected to read them out, marking the latest bid by Europe’s six largest economies to deliver what twenty-seven have failed to in over a decade: a real market for European capital.

The grouping calls itself the E6, and was launched in late January by Klingbeil and his French counterpart Roland Lescure. Its four declared priorities are the Savings and Investments Union, the international role of the euro (and the digital euro), joint defence procurement, and secure supply of critical raw materials.

The Diagnosis

European households are sitting on roughly €11 trillion in cash deposits, the largest pool of idle wealth in the developed world. The money earns close to nothing and finances close to nothing. Across the wider continent, private savings stand at €33 trillion. Every year, around €300 billion of European capital walks out of the door, the bulk of it heading to Wall Street. The US stock market accounts for around 54% of global market capitalisation. Large European markets sit at 15.7%.

The intellectual case has already been made. Twice. In April 2024, former Italian prime minister Enrico Letta published Much more than a market, a report commissioned by the Council. He diagnosed the problem in detail: twenty-seven national markets, twenty-seven sets of insolvency rules, twenty-seven tax regimes, and a population that quite reasonably parks its money in the bank rather than navigate that maze.

Five months later, Mario Draghi delivered The Future of European Competitiveness. He estimated that Europe needs an additional €750-€800 billion in annual investment to keep pace with the United States and China. Without it, he wrote, the bloc faces an “existential challenge”.

The Dark Trading Fight

The opening fight is technical and revealing. France and Spain have drafted a joint position paper, seen by POLITICO, targeting so-called ‘systematic internalisers’. These are the in-house trading platforms run by investment banks, most of them sitting in the City of London, on which firms like JPMorgan and Goldman Sachs handle European equity trades without showing the prices to the wider market. Paris and Madrid want sunlight. London’s banks have grown comfortable.

The Real Argument

The smaller capitals are nervous, and not without reason. Ireland and Portugal have warned that the E6 risks steamrolling the twenty-one other governments. Luxembourg, whose financial sector was built on regulatory arbitrage, has gone further. Its finance minister, Gilles Roth, has argued publicly that turning ESMA into a centralised supervisor would not help the EU reach its stated objectives. Those concerns are real. They are also parochial.

A continent that wants to negotiate with Washington and Beijing on equal terms cannot continue to run fifty-two separate financial supervisors. The numbers do not allow it. The geopolitics do not allow it. The Commission’s own proposal for an expanded ESMA, with an independent Executive Board overseeing the largest cross-border firms, has the European Central Bank’s full backing.

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So, the 16-Hour European Council summit has now come to an end, and the debate is raging on about whether Europe has succeeded, failed, whether our Union is collapsing or being strengthened, and whether the journalists should have been made to stay up all night drinking beers and coffees as our leaders debated our future.

At first glance, the December European Council looked reassuringly familiar: Ukraine, enlargement, migration, security, competitiveness. The usual choreography of unity, resolve, and carefully hedged ambition at a time of geopolitical crisis, transatlantic strife, and internal squabbling between member states.

Yet beneath the procedural calm, this Council meeting was highlighted as being a historic event, where Europe would be able to overcome several major geopolitical barriers and start throwing its weight around a little more.

It mattered precisely because it exposed something deeper and more uncomfortable: the EU’s governing reflex when confronted with long-term strategic responsibility under conditions of permanent political fragmentation.

This was not a Council that answered the question of where Europe is going, it was a Council that revealed how Europe moves when it cannot afford to stand still, but cannot quite agree on how to move forward. What emerged was not paralysis, but a distinctly European form of motion: incremental, legally cautious, politically defensive, and increasingly reliant on financial engineering rather than political consolidation.

The agenda was heavy because the moment was heavy, with Ukraine remaining a test not only of European solidarity but also of European endurance. The enlargement question continues to press against institutional limits that leaders are trying hard not to reopen publicly. Migration continues to corrode trust between capitals and play into the ongoing far-right culture war, all while defence and competitiveness hover between aspiration and delivery, seen as a litmus test of our ability to survive history itself.

And all of this unfolds against a backdrop of domestic fragility: elections, fiscal constraints, coalition politics, and a persistent fear of voter fatigue towards “European responsibility” as our former American allies under Donald Trump continue to assault our way of life.

This Council did not fail, and it’s important to underline this; however, it didn’t come out of the meeting smelling of roses either, and several major weaknesses and contributions were laid bare for the world, and particularly our enemies, to see.

So let’s dig into this

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The good

EUCO Agrees on Ukraine funding, the Union concretises common EU debt

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2024 was a tumultuous year for the far-right Sweden Democrats (SD). Two large scandals involving disinformation tactics and another tied to criminal affiliations resulted in widespread attention and many discussions.

Yet, despite the media and public criticism, the SD emerged relatively undamaged regarding electoral support and trust. While seemingly paradoxical, this resilience reflects the deeper dynamics and behaviours of far-right politics in Europe.

The Troll Factory and The Wedding

Kalla Fakta (Cold Facts) , a TV4 channel investigative team, exposed the first scandal. Their reporting revealed a “troll factory” operated by individuals directly linked to the Sweden Democrats.

This coordinated and organised operation was done in order to spread disinformation as well as extreme and hateful rhetoric through fake social media accounts.

The operation was mainly targeting journalists, political rivals, and minority communities as Muslims. The far right campaign aimed to stimulate the SD’s ideological base while discrediting political and other opponents​​.

The second controversy was about the wedding party of SD leader Jimmie Aokesson. Among the attendees were members of criminal motorcycle gangs and individuals associated with anti-Semitism, racism, and conspiracy theories. The event, rife with questionable associations, ignited a month-long media storm, with newspapers and major platforms publishing daily articles on the scandal​.

Damage Control

Despite these scandals, the electoral support for the SD remained stable. There are several explanations and reasons for such development.

1. A Core Base Anchored In Political Tribalism

The Sweden Democrats' core supporters have behaviours similar to football ultrasand hooligans, but they share one key characteristic: strong loyalty irrespective of scandals.

Many dismiss mainstream media as biased, often branding it as "politically correct" and aligned against their interests. This skepticism insulates their allegiance, creating a near-impenetrable shield against media criticism and public outcry.

2. Immigration And Crime: The Priorities

Since 2022, immigration and crime are among more popular and dominating topics in Sweden’s political discourse, and these issues remain important for SD supporters, as seen in other EU member states.

Swing voters and core supporters may disapprove of Aokesson choices or the troll factory revelations, and may have strong feelings about the topic. However, they more or less continue to see the SD as the only party willing to address problems in Swedish society, or at the very least, support some of the party’s policies regarding what they perceive as existential threats to Swedish society.

3. A Tactical Silence from the Right-Wing Government

Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson and his Moderate Party government avoided much of the criticism of the SD during these crises.

Instead, they maintained a “business-as-usual” approach, reflecting the political reality that their administration depends on SD’s parliamentary support. This tacit alignment with the far-right mirrors a broader European trend, where mainstream conservatives increasingly collaborate with or accommodate far-right groups to sustain governing coalitions.

The European Parliament Elections “Punishment”

The 2024 European Parliament elections marked an unusual setback for the SD, as it did not increase its vote share for the first time in over two decades. The elections were seen as a disappointment for many leading and active members of the SD.

While this result drew internal criticism, it was mitigated by the abstention of “Swexit” supporters—voters ideologically opposed to the European Union who often avoid participating in EU elections. The limited impact of this misstep suggests that the SD’s broader political trajectory remains intact​.

Looking Ahead: A Precarious Political Landscape

As Sweden approaches its 2026 national elections, the SD's role in the ruling coalition remains to be determined. Rather than moderating its positions, the party has embraced more extreme rhetoric on immigration, culture, and crime.

This strategy appears designed to energise the SD’s most radical supporters, many of whom view the current political moment as their long-awaited opportunity for influence. This radical posture, however, may destabilise Sweden’s ruling coalition.

The SD’s capacity to withdraw parliamentary support constantly threatens the government’s stability, leaving the country’s political future hanging in the balance.

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On Friday 8^th November, the Irish prime minister, officially called Taoiseach (pronounced ‘Thee-shuck’), Simon Harris of Fine Gael, called a general election for Friday 28^th November to elect the 34th Dáil Éireann. Although the official campaign was short, unofficial campaigning began months ago, with the date for the general election the worst kept secret in Ireland.

With a growing population, the number of TDs (MPs) increase from 160 to 174, the highest ever. These are spread across 3 – 5 seat constituencies, growing from 39 to 43. As a country, Ireland has a deep and enduring fondness for the electorally mind-boggling system of Proportional Representation – Single Transferable Vote (PR-STV).

Malta is the only other country to use this system for parliamentary elections, while several legislatures in Australia are elected with PR-STV. The Victorian Electoral Commission has a handy video explaining it.

In terms of the election results, Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael, received a boost in seats, while the Green Party was decimated. Sinn Féin maintained its place as one of the three big parties, with the centre-left Social Democrats and Labour Party making big gains. Finally, right-wing parties such as Independent Ireland and Aontú made smaller increases.

The Irish electorate has spoken, but what have they said? How did the incumbents fair? Where did the grandparents and grandkids place their votes? And did the far-right make a breakthrough? These three key takeaways from the 2024 Irish general election are laid out below.

1. Incumbents were not crucified (except the Greens…)

Since the foundation of the Irish state in December 1922, two centre-right parties have dominated politics: Fianna Fáil (pronounced ‘Fee-nah Fall’) and Fine Gael (‘Fee-nah Gale’). They were born out of a split in an older iteration of present-day Sinn Féin (‘Shin Fey-in’) over the treaty with the UK after the Irish War of Independence (January 1919 – July 1921). Both would become the opposing sides in the subsequent Irish Civil War (June 1922 – May 1923).

In the decades afterwards, one would either lead the government while the other would lead the opposition. Fianna Fáil led around 70% of all Irish governments between 1922 – 2011. From the late 1950s to the late 1980s, both held over 80% of seats in Dáil Éireann, and as recently as at the November 1982 election, they held 87% of seats.

‘Civil war politics’, as it has been termed in Ireland, unofficially ended in 2016 when Fianna Fáil supported Fine Gael’s minority government. However, it was formally shuttered after the 2020 general election, when both entered government together (with the Greens), with Fine Gael entering government for a record third consecutive time since 2011.

Both centre-right parties went into the 2024 general election attempting the balancing act of trying to distinguish themselves apart in order to entice voters with election promises while defending the record of the government on key policy decisions.

For the 2024 election, I explained here for the French Dispatch the big issues that featured in the campaign, which included a crippling decade-long housing and homelessness crisis.

Despite the two centre-right parties “being in cahoots or coalition” with each other since 2016, the electorate rewarded them with additional seats, with Fianna Fáil now the largest party in Dáil Éireann for the first time since the 2007 election.

Based on first preference votes in the earlier table, it signals that 40% of people in Ireland want a continuation of the political status quo for the next five years. Indeed, the exit poll found that 31% favoured both parties returning into government together without others involved, the largest of such governing options presented in the exit poll.

It is a remarkable outcome considering the pattern of incumbent government parties suffering heavily at general elections across the EU. Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael join the likes of New Democracy in Greece, who are the exception to this current electoral trend and were rewarded by voters come election time.

The same cannot be said, of course, of the Greens, who were left with just one seat. It follows a similar pattern for such parties in other EU countries recently, where their tide of popularity has gone out from under them compared to five years ago. Both Green Party MEPs from Ireland lost their seats at the European Parliament elections in June.

2. A generational divide

A very clear generational divide now exists between younger and older voters on who they gave their first preference to. As the graph below highlights, the exit poll found that Sinn Féin was the largest party for those aged 18 – 24 (29%) and 25 – 34 (36%), after which the numbers dip when looking at older age groups. Please see the graph below.

A source of this appeal to younger voters for Sinn Féin was its campaign message of change and an opportunity to have, for the first time ever, a government not led by Fianna Fáil or Fine Gael. A left-wing nationalist party, its anti-establishment rhetoric appealed to younger voters during the 2010s on issues such as the housing crisis.

As a result, it has been able to broaden its base beyond working-class urban areas and along rural areas of the border with Northern Ireland.

For Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael, their support grows as we move up through those older age groups, in particular those aged 50 – 64 and 65+. Throughout the election, they were able to highlight their record of managing the economy successfully, from the painful years of the EU – IMF bailout to shepherding it through the recent crises such as COVID-19.

In short, younger voters who feel that the two establishment parties are not solving their pressing needs, in particular housing, look towards Sinn Féin for a change in the political status quo. Meanwhile, older voters broadly see Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael as the responsible, steady hand at the tiller to manage Ireland’s economy.

3. No right-wing breakthrough

While right-wing parties such as the Aontú (‘A-in-two’) and the newly established Independent Ireland made marginal increases in seats in Dáil Éireann, there was no breakthrough of the far-right. Such parties received very few first preferences, such as the Irish Freedom Party (0.6%), The Irish People (0.3%), the National Party (0.3%), or Irish First (0.1%).

Due to the significant recent increase in refugees coming into Ireland, it has been exploited by far-right parties and groups, pulling immigration into being politicised for the very first time in Ireland. This all boiled over onto the streets of Dublin city centre in November 2023, as the country was shocked as it witnessed a rare occurrence of violent riots.

However, when looking at the most important issue for voters in the general election were, immigration came fourth in the exit poll at 6%. The clear top issue was housing and homelessness at 29%, followed by the cost of living at 19%.

Although, at present, Ireland’s far-right presence remains on the political margins, Ireland is not immune to the rise of the far-right, and it remains to be seen over the coming years what their trajectory will be here.

What of government formation?

A new government will not be in place before Christmas, and it looks like government formation talks could last until well into January and possibly into February.

It is widely expected that Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael will enter government together for the second time. However, they are just short of a working majority, and with the Green Party no longer a viable coalition option, they have to look elsewhere.

It is not the first time in Irish coalition government history that the smaller party has been decimated after an election. It has given pause for thought for the Social Democrats and the Labour Party in terms of entering government.

The Labour Party looks to have been forgiven by the electorate for being in government with Fine Gael between 2011 – 2016, during the painful years of austerity. Meanwhile, the Social Democrats returned their highest number of seats since being founded in 2015. Both will likely wish to maintain their electoral gains and not end up like the Green Party.

The most likely outcome is that a number of independents will be approached and enticed with bilateral agreements that will benefit their constituencies. This was done for the 2016 – 2020 Fine Gael minority government, which remained stable and served its full term.

And people will indeed be looking for stability as Ireland and the EU brace for a challenging 2025 and beyond.

Ciaran O’Driscoll researches EU politics.

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With several months left in the current government term, the prime minister of Ireland officially called the Taoiseach (pronounced ‘thee-shuck’), announced on Friday, 8th November, the dissolution of the 33^rd Irish parliament, Dáil Éireann.

And just three Fridays later, the electorate will vote into office 174 members of that parliament. But what are the big election issues? Will Sinn Féin lead the next government? Will the far-right make their breakthrough?

These three key questions will all be answered for you here.

What are the big issues?

• Housing/homelessness

Since exiting the EU – IMF bailout in 2013, Ireland has become one of the richest countries in the EU. However, despite the economic success, the country is in the grips of a housing and homelessness crisis. There is an estimated shortfall of some 256,000 units and it is expected that 52,000 units will be built every year for 25 years to meet this shortfall. However, in 2023, around 33,000 units were built, and a similar figure is expected for 2024.

This has pushed up residential property prices, which are up 10.1% nationally and 10.8% in Dublin in the year to August. The national median price for a dwelling is now at €345,000. This has driven up rents, with the average now at €1,612 per month nationally and €1,829 in Dublin.

This crisis has spilled over into a deepening homelessness crisis, where in October there was a record number of 14,760 people accessing emergency accommodation, with 4,561 of those children.

• Cost of living

The outgoing government has produced give-away budgets to deal with recent challenges. Those left unemployed by COVID-19 received €350 a week, while every household will have received by next year some €1,000 to help deal with the high-cost energy bills due to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. However, despite these budgets and that the rate of inflation is now at a three-year low of 0.7% in Ireland as of October, according to polling, 60% feel they have less money than they did last year.

• Health care

Ireland’s health service is nearly always an issue in any Irish general election. This year, key issues relating to it include continued overcrowding (over 10,500 people are waiting for admission to a bed), waiting lists (over 844,000 are waiting for some kind of hospital care), and broader shortages in medical staff and general practitioners. The spiralling costs of the much-delayed new National Children’s Hospital in Dublin (currently at €2.25 billion) is another election issue.

• Refugees / Immigration

The shortage of housing and the dramatic rise of refugees, in particular from Ukraine, has politicised immigration for the first time in Ireland. Opposition to this has developed into marches and demonstrations, in particular at locations linked or rumoured to be linked to house people seeking asylum, 31 of which have been subject to arson attacks.

Disinformation on social media and messaging apps by far-right parties and groups has helped fuel anger within a section of the public over immigration. This all boiled over onto the streets of Dublin city centre in November 2023, as the country was shocked as it witnessed a rare occurrence of violent riots.

According to polling, while it has dropped down as an electoral issue since local and European Parliament elections in June, immigration looks set to be a feature of Irish politics after this election as those on the far-right capitalise on it.

• Palestine

Ireland remains an outlier in the EU, as there is almost universal support for the plight of the people in Palestine in what Israel has inflicted on the Gaza Strip following Hamas’ abhorrent terrorist attack on 7 October 2023.

Ireland’s own centuries-long history of colonisation and occupation under British rule is the source of Ireland’s long-standing sympathy with Palestine.

To reflect this universalism in Ireland, ten party leaders of all political hues voiced support for Palestine and passing the Occupied Territories Bill in a 10-way party leader TV debate on RTÉ on Monday 18 November.

Will Sinn Féin lead the next government?

Yes. Well, that would have been the answer had the election taken place this time last year.

After topping the February 2020 general election vote, Sinn Féin (meaning ‘We Ourselves’ in Irish) remained the most popular party, reaching a high of around 36% according to Politico in August 2022.

Even a year ago, in November, it remained at around 30% in opinion polling.

A left-wing nationalist party, sitting in The Left group in the European Parliament, it remains deeply committed to Northern Ireland’s unification with Ireland. With anti-establishment rhetoric and its ability to appeal to younger voters over issues such as the housing crisis during the 2010s it was able to broaden its base beyond republican working-class areas and along rural areas of the border with Northern Ireland.

And with support levels closing in on 40%, Sinn Féin look set to be in government in both Belfast and Dublin. However, on the eve of the general election, it stood in third at 18% in polls. This decline can be linked to the politicisation of immigration over the last two years.

According to polling, it was the top issue for people at the local and European Parliament elections in June. Research found that voters who abandoned the party in the June elections viewed immigration as a top issue.

These voters moved to far-right parties, who were attracted by their anti-establishment rhetoric and harder views on immigration and refugees. Further, with Sinn Féin increasingly becoming viewed as ‘the government in waiting’, it moved to the centre on many policy issues, shedding those anti-establishment voters. Independents and others are now at around 21% according to Politico.

With this and with two out of the three parties in the outgoing government, Fine Gael (on 24%) and Fianna Fáil (on 20%), now having overtaken Sinn Féin, it appears the tide has gone out its chances to lead its first government in Dáil Éireann.

Will the far-right make their official debut?

As far-right parties grew in support across the EU in recent years, it was a movement that never materialised in Ireland, a country that was broadly conservative in the decades after the foundation of the state in 1922.

While a fracturing of Irish politics began in the 1990s, it stepped up a gear due to the economic turmoil and years of painful austerity following the 2008 financial crash. During those years, Irish politics moved leftwards with the growth of left-wing and centre-left parties.

However, as highlighted above, the recent politicisation of immigration has brought a new wave of right-wing and far-right parties into the mainstream. It remains to be seen (due to Ireland’s use of PR-STV) if far-right parties can make a similar breakthrough in this election as left-wing parties did throughout the 2010s.

At the same time, their support remains low overall and nationally. Out of the 949 local seats up for grabs in the June local election, just two went to far-right parties. But even one or two seats in Dáil Éireann will be viewed by them as a success.

The final results will all come down to transfers, as is so often said of Irish general elections.

Ciaran O’Driscoll researches EU politics.

Thank you for reading the French Dispatch! If you liked what you read, you should like this post and subscribe to the newsletter by clicking/tapping the button below:

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And if you’d like to contribute a coffee or two to help fuel my coverage of the wild world of politics, feel free to click on the picture below:

👋Hey guys, Julien here. The French Dispatch is a reader-supported publication, and both our coverage of current affairs as well as our ability to bring you more …

Read more

👋Hey guys, Julien here. The French Dispatch is a reader-supported publication, and both our coverage of current affairs as well as our …

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👋Hey guys, Julien here. The French Dispatch is a reader-supported publication, and both our coverage of current affairs as well as our ability to bring you more new…

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While the Christmas break has definitely started for this year, there was a…

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The French Dispatch is a reader-supported publication. If you enjoy reading articles written by high-level experts, then make sure to support the publication by liking, subscribing, and sharing it with your friends and colleagues. You may even consider taking a paid subscription.

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