There's a direct clash over the migrant issue between Italy and Spain first, between Spain and Italy immediately after, and now between Germany and Italy. If Rome controls Madrid by suspending Schengen, then Madrid controls Rome by imposing border controls. Meanwhile, Berlin isn't standing idly by and has decided to take the same hard line against Rome: the so-called Dubliners, that is, asylum seekers who landed on Italian soil and crossed the border, will be sent back to Italy. Those who wound by sovereignty, perish by sovereignty, even by the determination of another European government that could be described as center-right.
Giorgia Meloni's Italian government probably hadn't thought of this: for better or worse, the rules apply to everyone. In short, all allies (Europeans, that is), but with reservations. Above and beyond any political considerations, we should reflect on the large-scale consequences of adopting such stringent measures. In the sense that Italy's mere "outburst" (if we may use a jargon term) seems to be a waste of time, being a measure extremely limited in duration (in contrast to the concrete risk presented to justify it) and unsustainable over time given its immediate "boomerang" effect. One might wonder where "realpolitik" has gone: the politics firmly anchored in pragmatism, in the concrete and real economic and social interests of the country, the politics that eschews empty ideologies.
To put it differently, and to look cynically at the general situation that has developed since February 2022, what is missing is a way of engaging in politics by engaging equally with both potential allies (not always such) and those who are not, specifically to implement decisions geared towards convenience and security rather than a relatively reinterpreted ethic. Ceuta and Hormuz, although geographically distant, although they are respectively an expression of migratory pressure in North Africa and energy security in the Persian Gulf, are nevertheless both, and equally, a reflection of a profound general geopolitical crisis in which "borders" and "economic centers" of interest are transformed into instruments of mass pressure due to their ability to influence daily life, energy and fuel costs, and even shopping carts. The attempt to assert different regional sovereignties to the detriment of multilateral institutions would appear to represent the real danger, and this attempt at assertion alone must be vigorously resisted to affirm and confirm, even vis-à-vis the Trump Administration, the validity of the shared rules of international law. The Strait of Hormuz, the United States-Iran dispute, to be clear, actually represents the epicenter of the conflict between Donald Trump's United States and Xi Jinping's China and Vladimir Putin's Russia, who, in this circumstance, are supporting Iran. The European Union, with all its member states, (apparently) lacking strategic and relational foresight as a whole and within its individual components, appears to lack the tools needed to counter the "exuberance" (if one wishes to use the expression) of its international competitors, almost risking implosion due to the fruitless sovereignism of the individual national governments that claim it.
