We wrote about it on September 15th: Ceuta, the Spanish government sets the end of the year as the deadline for exiting the migration crisis. Two days later, Strasbourg’s response arrived: with 339 votes in favour, 225 against and 16 abstentions, the chamber approved a resolution on the migration crisis affecting Ceuta and Melilla on September 17th.

The text, backed by the Populars and the right after the failure of an agreement with the Socialists and with the majority supporting von der Leyen, expresses concern over the mass regularisation launched by Pedro Sánchez’s government, calling it a possible “pull factor” — a factor capable of attracting new arrivals rather than containing them.

This is the first time the European chamber has formally addressed Spain’s handling of the emergency, after weeks in which Madrid’s executive announced reception plans and funds for the autonomous city, as reported in the September 15th piece. The resolution does not go into the merits of the figures announced by Sánchez, but shifts the judgement to the political level: the majority that approved it considers the regularisation a risky choice in terms of its attractiveness for flows towards the Union.

On the opposite front, the Socialists and Democrats had proposed an alternative amendment that shifted the criticism onto Italy, challenging the introduction of internal border controls from August 1st and their extension until September 16th, 2026. The amendment was rejected, leaving the EPP-right line as the sole text approved by the chamber.

The resolution closes with an operational request: to accelerate cooperation between Spain and Morocco on returns and readmission of migrants who entered irregularly at the end of July — the same issue, that of returns linked to the July 29th entries, that the Spanish government had already addressed in its end-of-year plans.

The vote outlines a new geography of alliances in Strasbourg on the migration dossier: an axis between Populars and the right that prevailed both over the Socialist proposal and over the Community executive’s line, while the management of the Ceuta crisis now remains under the direct scrutiny of the European Parliament.

The newspaper had written about it on September 14, 2026, when the election night count was still provisional and the late advance votes and postal votes were still missing (Sweden has voted, but the real count starts on Wednesday). That count, announced for Wednesday, has arrived: according to SVT, the centre-left bloc led by Magdalena Andersson has obtained 175 seats out of 349, one more than Ulf Kristersson’s centre-right coalition, stuck at 174.

The margin separating the two coalitions remains minimal. On Wednesday afternoon, with less than 1% of the districts still to be counted, the votes dividing the two blocs were just 26,169. Such a narrow difference explains the caution with which the Social Democratic leader herself commented on the result: “We have to wait for the final election result,” Andersson said, recalling that the definitive certification of the Riksdag vote will not arrive before the weekend following the elections.

The picture that emerged on Wednesday nonetheless marks a reversal compared to the election night projections, when — as reported in the September 14 piece — the data released by Valmyndigheten were explicitly preliminary precisely in view of the recovery of postal and late votes. It is that recovery that produced the overtaking announced by SVT: a one-seat margin, sufficient according to the public broadcaster to mark the shift in majority from Kristersson’s outgoing government to the centre-left opposition.

It remains to be seen whether the one-seat margin will hold up to the final certification. With just over twenty-six thousand votes separating the two coalitions at the intermediate stage of the count, the last vote tallies to be counted could still shift the outcome. Sweden thus arrives at the weekend with a result that has been announced but not yet secured: the number that counts — 175 to 174 — is Wednesday evening’s, not necessarily the one that will be certified in the coming days.

On September 16, 2026, in Strasbourg, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen delivered her annual State of the Union address before the European Parliament. At the center of the speech was a package of climate-related measures and an announcement directly concerning transatlantic relations: the opening of an “associate member” status of the Union for Canada.

Among the proposals was a new Climate Insurance Alliance created to close a gap that the president herself quantified: today only 25% of losses caused by natural disasters in Europe are covered by private insurance. Von der Leyen also cited the impact of summer heatwaves on the continent, speaking of 35,000 excess deaths and 660,000 hectares burned. On this point, the president stressed the need to speed up the pace of European action against the effects of climate change.

The speech also touched on artificial intelligence: von der Leyen called for slowing down the development of the most advanced models, so-called frontier AI, for safety reasons — a chapter that stood alongside, without replacing, the climate section of the address.

The most significant institutional development, however, concerned Canada. For the first time, a head of government was invited to the State of the Union address: Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney attended the speech as part of the proposal through which the Commission is paving the way for the country to become the first associate member of the European Union. According to the Commission, trade in goods between the Union and Canada has grown by 75% in less than a decade, a result attributed to the CETA free trade agreement already in force between the parties.

In the same speech, von der Leyen linked two separate episodes from the preceding weeks to risks for European security: a drone that entered Lithuanian airspace and was shot down by NATO fighter jets, and the launch of signal rockets by a Russian warship near a Danish helicopter. The president called the Russian conduct behind both cases dangerous and reckless, stressing that these are recurring episodes rather than isolated facts, while nonetheless treating them as separate cases rather than a single sequence.

The proposal on Canada produced an immediate reaction from Washington. According to El País, US President Donald Trump threatened very severe tariffs or a cut in trade with Europe across several areas, should he deem the project of an associated Canada within the Union hostile. The threat came just hours after the Strasbourg proposal and links, for the first time explicitly, the transatlantic trade dossier to the Canadian institutional matter.

The timeline of the confrontation continues in short order: also according to El País, Prime Minister Carney is expected on September 17 before the plenary of the European Parliament, the same day on which Trump’s threat was made public. It is not yet clear what concrete content the associate member status will have, nor whether the US trade threat will translate into actual measures in the coming days.

The confrontation between the two sides of the Atlantic thus continues on a dual track: the technical process of Canada’s status in Brussels and Carney’s hearing in Strasbourg on September 17, while no concrete measures have so far come from Washington beyond Trump’s statement.