Since this summer’s migration crisis, there has been much talk about what Europe owes Ceuta. It is time to look at what Ceuta costs Europe. These roughly 19 km² of Spanish territory on the African coast are heavily subsidized and supported by the European Union. But the cost of the presidios cannot be measured in millions of euros alone. While it is first and foremost budgetary, it is also political, bringing to Brussels the very divisions that the European Pact on Migration thought it had overcome. And above all, what is the price of responsibility? How far should European solidarity go when it is called upon to shoulder the consequences of national political choices?
