On paper, Italy and Spain should be natural allies: two sun-soaked Mediterranean economies, both wrestling with migration, tourism and the same Brussels rulebook. In practice, the relationship has curdled into one of the more revealing feuds in European politics, and this week the fallout spilled fully into the open.
The rift is less about geography than ideology. Rome and Madrid now sit at opposite ends of the continent’s political spectrum, and their governments have taken to using each other as a foil, trading barbs over how Europe should handle borders, spending and the balance between national sovereignty and collective rules. What might once have been managed quietly is now conducted in public, for domestic audiences that reward the fight.
The stakes reach beyond wounded pride. The EU’s southern flank carries much of the weight on migration and increasingly on defence and energy, and it works best when its biggest members pull together. A Franco-German engine has long powered the bloc; a functional Rome-Madrid axis was supposed to balance it. Instead, the two capitals are demonstrating how personal and partisan European diplomacy has become.
None of this threatens the Union’s foundations. But it is a reminder that the greatest strains on Europe are no longer only external. Increasingly they run between neighbours who share a sea, a currency and a set of problems, and almost nothing else.
