Denmark and Italy target Spain's mass regularization of 500,000 migrants

Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen, backed by Giorgia Meloni, asked the European Council to examine Spain's regularization of half a million people. Eighteen governments and the Commission met beforehand without Spain to prepare the offensive.

The scene is telling. At the European Council meeting in Brussels, the Danish Prime Minister, **Mette Frederiksen**, called for Spain to be examined not for curtailing rights, but for granting them to half a million people through a regularization process. She enjoyed the enthusiastic support of the Italian Prime Minister, **Giorgia Meloni**. The logic that for years served to rebuke Hungary or Poland when their governments restricted rights is thus inverted: now the member state that expands them is the one under review.

## A breakfast of eighteen governments without Spain

The most revealing thing was not the debate itself, but what preceded it. Eighteen governments and the Commission itself met for breakfast without Spain to prepare their offensive. The method mirrors the content: those who discuss who belongs in Europe do so in secret, without counting on other partners. The legitimacy of the Union depends on its decisions being made in public, with known rules and clear responsibilities.

The Commission, the supposed guardian of the treaties, should stand above factions. That it conspires with the side preparing an attack on another member state says a great deal about the drift of **Ursula von der Leyen**. But that retreat is also a sign of weakness: the Spanish regularization breaks the supposed inevitability of the European narrative on migration.

## The Ceuta declaration and the vocabulary of replacement

After the Ceuta crisis, Meloni and Frederiksen published a joint declaration committing to protect Europe's supposed Christian cultural heritage and asking those who arrive not to impose on it a way of life they do not want. The signature carries a certain irony: the heir to the fascist tradition and the social democratic prime minister of one of the world's most secularized countries. Their Christianity without believers points to a border.

That vocabulary, that of the so-called Great Replacement, betrays a deep shift. It is no longer about rights recognized for those who live under the same law, but about a way of life that is inherited and must be defended. It is easy to see the irony in those who promote deportation centers in third countries demanding that Spain be examined for deviating from what is European.

## Greenland and electoral self-interest

Frederiksen accuses Spain of acting on its own when it is only driven by its own electoral interest. She does so a month after having single-handedly negotiated the future of Greenland. In January, when **Donald Trump** threatened to seize the island and punish the countries that sent symbolic forces there, Europeans closed ranks with Copenhagen without asking which electorate it suited. That solidarity suited Frederiksen perfectly.

Today, the one who received that solidarity is calling for a partner about to hold elections to be examined, and for something that threatens no one, but rather recognizes those who already live and work in Spain. The regularization abusa no rule, according to the very framing of the debate.

## A precedent that breaks the narrative

The Spanish regularization disproves the claim that there is no alternative on migration. It raises the prospect of recovering what we were told it meant to be European: rights, coexistence, and legal and labor protection. The Union existed precisely to protect individual rights against majorities and national stockpiles. When those rights, designed never to be put to a vote, can be reviewed depending on the government of the day, the problem is no longer Spain.