Europe and the eternal north-south rift

Financial Times Europe6 Aug 2026Janan Ganesh janan.ganesh@ft.com

Last week end, when the Span ish prime min is ter called some other European states“selfish”, even allies must have winced. This is not because Pedro Sánchez waswithout a case. Gov ern ments were pro pos ing to (lit er ally) isol ate Spain after a surgeof migrants into Ceuta. Some had got their facts wrong. It is just that many see himas a stick ler for the national interest him self. He has rejec ted Nato’s ambi tion tospend 5 per cent of GDP on defence, as Rus sia would not be “bring ing its troopsacross the Pyren ees”. Nations on the other side of those moun tains found that linewant ing in solid ar ity.

North ern and south ern Europe inhabit increas ingly dif fer ent men tal worlds. Thecon sum ing focus of the north is Rus sia. Unless Vladi mir Putin mel lows in theautumn of his life, this will not change soon. The south, which has less expos ure tothat prob lem, can cite other pri or it ies. One is cli mate change, which dis crim in atesaccord ing to lat it ude. Sánchez once sug ges ted that Spain’s efforts against it shouldcount as defence expendit ure. This sum mer’s wild fires make it harder to dis misshim as a soph ist.

The feud between Sánchez and the Italian prime min is ter, Gior gia Mel oni, overCeuta masks how sim ilar the two coun tries are on defence. Earlier this year, sheruled out send ing Italian troops to secure a post-con flict Ukraine. (And she is a Rus -sia hawk by the stand ards of her coun try’s right wing.) Like Spain, Italy has onlyjust met Nato’s long stand ing 2 per cent tar get. In a recent poll, Itali ans were theonly sur veyed nation that opposed an increase in national defence spend ing.

There are excep tions, such as wel larmed Greece, and ambi gu ities, such as whetherFrance is north ern or Medi ter ranean, but core defence budgets as a share of GDPare gen er ally lower on the south ern side of the 45th par al lel. In peace time, thisscarcely mattered. In the future, it could be all-defin ing. It is one thing for Europe todis agree over eco nomic man age ment, as the then frugal north and high-debt southdid for dec ades. It is another to dis agree over what counts as an exist en tial threat.

On its own, this would be enough to cause north and south to grow apart. Butaggrav at ing things is the migrant issue. Medi ter ranean coun tries are the nat uralpoint of entry for irreg u lar arrivals from Africa. With luck, Europe will cometogether to defuse the prob lem. Pic ture the north sub sid ising the south’s bor der for -ti fic a tions, and all of Europe tak ing an on-the-ground role in Africa to improvepeople’s lives at source. (France had a coun ter insur gent mis sion in the Sahel until2022.)

The trouble is that even writ ing this scen ario down brings home its fant astic unlike -li hood. Chad’s fer til ity rate is around six births per woman; Spain’s is scarcelyabove one. Raw demo graphic pres sure will push Afric ans towards Europe in num -bers that even mas ter ful poli cy makers would struggle to man age. If the south ernfron tier proves por ous, north ern states might demand harder internal checks onsouth-to-north move ment within Europe. That is, no Schen gen area or — worse forEuropean togeth er ness — a frag men ted one.

North versus south is a polit ical rift hard wired into the world. I won der if KemiBadenoch has to con tain a laugh when Andy Burnham talks about Bri tain’s, whichis close to non-exist ent by global stand ards. Nigeria, where she grew up, moved itscap ital from coastal Lagos to interior Abuja at least in part to bridge its north-southgap, which is groun ded in reli gion and dif fer ing exper i ences of Brit ish rule. Indiachanges — in income, in atti tude to the Hindi lan guage — as you move south. Thesplit is ingrained even in the UK’s peer coun tries. Think of Italy or Bel gium, or Ger -many. (In Thomas Mann’s Bud den brooks, a woman from Lübeck reacts to Munichas though it were Nep tune.) The US fought a civil war along lat it ud inal lines. Theonce-Con fed er ate states still vote dif fer ently to the north-east.

You find the north-south prob lem every where because dif fer ent lat it udes pro ducedif fer ent weather, and so dif fer ent crops, and cul ture is to some extent down streamof these mater ial con di tions. In all the above cases, there is a strong enough cent ralstate or fer vent enough national feel ing to hold things together. As a con tin ent,Europe has little of either. In 2020, its north south gap was shrink ing. The derided“Pigs” had made budget cuts and other reforms that brought them closer to thenorth ern eco nom ies, as was (and is) reflec ted in bond yield spreads. Com pla- cencyabout Rus sia was almost pan-con- tin ental. The onset of war has opened the gapagain.

A con tin ent that was torn along an east-west axis for dec ades might be revert ing tothe more ancient north- south one, rooted not in the old Catho- lic-Prot est ant schismbut in dif fer ent threat per cep tions. This mat ters because num bers mat ter. It issooth ing to say that demo cratic Europe has 500mn-plus people — against Rus sia’s145mn — but Italy and Spain are over a fifth of that. If the EU becomes more of adefence club, it is easy to see how Bri tain joins, but some exist ing mem bers mightdrift to the mar gins.

The north skirts this sub ject, for fear of being seen to cari ca ture Medi ter rane- ansas care free volup tu ar ies. The south, for its part, does not want to seem un-European. But there is a diver gence of interest here, born of hard geo graphic fact.Those who aspire to divide the con- tin ent have all too much to work with