EU Analytics – September 2026 review: The fractures of EU politics laid bare despite calls for unity

By Nicolai von Ondarza

The vote on Ceuta revealed some familiar divisions within the EP, and also some new ones.

September is “school’s back” month for the EU institutions, with von der Leyen’s “State of the Union” speech setting the scene. But while she, amongst many other things, called for unity and a joint European response for instance to hybrid attacks, at the very same plenary her platform split again. A look at the votes thus reveals the more fractured nature of EU politics: The controversy over Ceuta split her platform right in the middle of Renew, with the EPP voting with the far-right; it revealed an uploading of national polarisation to the European level; and in the Council, member states disagreed heavily over the interaction of free movement and national welfare.

Time to dive in:

Highlight of the month: EP resolution on Ceuta

For a deeper dive this month I chose the EP vote on the “hybrid attack” by tens of thousands of migrants crossing irregularly from Morocco into the Spanish territory of Ceuta at the end of July 2026. Dozens of people died, and though Ceuta has a special regime as part of Schengen with extra controls, many other national governments quickly panicked.

The event and what followed soon became a lightning rod for disagreements over EU migration policy. Since then, delegations from the EPP, ECR and PfE have visited Ceuta, whereas disagreements between EU member states – most notably Spain and Italy – still continue. To this day, Italy and then in retaliation Spain have reintroduced border controls on each other, especially at airports.

At first sight, the vote was carried by what readers of EU Analytics now know fairly well, a “Venezuela” majority of the centre-right EPP, together with the ECR, the Patriots for Europe (PfE) and the Europe of Sovereign Nations (ESN). The left and centre-left of the EP voted against, with Renew split in the middle:

Data source: HowTheyVote.EU.

Beneath this by now almost normal majority on EU migration policies stretching from the centre-right to the far-right, several more interesting disagreements lurked. The first was over how to characterise the event itself. Whereas the EPP and those further to the right regarded it as a deliberate attack on an EU external border, for the S&D and groups further to the left it was “only” a severe border crisis, regarding language such as “invasion” as inflammatory.

This also intertwined with the “uploading” of intra-Spanish politics to the European level. Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez is the last remaining head of government from the centre-left in one of the major EU countries, and Spanish politics has become heavily polarised. The EPP here took the position of the Spanish Partido Popular, also blaming the Spanish government for creating “pull factors” for migration. In turn, the S&D – led by its largest delegation, the Spanish PSOE – heavily pushed back and accused the EPP of instrumentalising the crisis to attack the Spanish government. From the outset, this uploading of Spanish polarisation made an agreement between S&D and EPP highly unlikely on this resolution, even if both claimed to be looking for one.

This graph shows the support of MEPs for the resolution on Ceuta per member state. Data source: HowTheyVote.EU.

Finally, when looking at the geographic dimension of the vote, I found it striking that it had the highest support amongst MEPs from Central Europe and the Baltics – precisely those countries accusing Russia of instrumentalising migration as a hybrid weapon via Belarus. These are also the countries seeking solidarity from the rest of the EU on this, yet they gave little solidarity to the Spanish government. This also extended to the European Parliament, where the party of the Spanish government voted against the resolution, accusing the rest of the EU of lacking solidarity when it was most needed.

As a result, the vote itself highlighted exactly what it wanted to avoid: It laid bare the frictions in EU politics and how vulnerable its fragmented politics is to hybrid attacks in the area of migration.

Final votes in the European Parliament

In September 2026, the EP had one plenary session, from 14 to 17 September in Strasbourg. Overall, the plenary had 40 final votes recorded on HowTheyVote.EU. Key topics of the plenary included the “State of the Union” speech by Commission President von der Leyen and, a day later, the address by Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney, debates on hybrid attacks, and the summer effects of climate change in the form of heatwaves and wildfires. Notable votes were for instance on the defence omnibus, adaptations of the carbon border adjustment mechanism, and a couple of approvals on agreements such as with the UK or Norway. Looking at the data from these votes, three interesting aspects emerge:

First, this was a plenary where not only the far-right, but also the fragmentation of von der Leyen’s platform was clearly present. Of the 40 votes, 29 were passed on a broad consensus, five passed only on the platform of EPP, S&D and Renew, whereas one had a more leftist majority, three were “everyone but the EPP”, and two had a centre-right to far-right majority:

• There were the three – I am tempted to say usual – votes on genetically modified maize and soybean, where objections were passed by a majority of basically everyone but the EPP: the Left, the Greens, the S&D and Renew voting with the three far-right groups.
• One vote on gender equality in health was passed by a left/centre-left majority of Greens, Renew, S&D and the Left, with the EPP split in the middle.
• Finally, two votes passed with a centre-right to far-right majority, the one analysed above on Ceuta and a resolution on political prisoners in Cuba. Whereas Renew was split on Ceuta, it voted with the EPP, ECR, PfE and ESN on Cuba.

This graph shows the different majorities in this legislative period. Note the high share of majorities without the EPP this month, though, except for gender equality, these included parts of the far-right.

The second observation is that this month Renew was the most successful group, being part of the majority in 97.5 per cent of the votes. The key to this success was a return to its past flexibility: Large parts of it voted with the EPP and the far-right on Ceuta, for example, but with the S&D and the Greens on gender equality and the perpetual genetically modified maize. This meant it was more successful this month than the EPP or the S&D.

The third point I want to highlight is the position of the Greens in the European Parliament. On most votes, they almost position themselves as an extension of the S&D in the von der Leyen platform: When the S&D votes in favour, they usually do; when the EPP (and now, usually, Renew) votes with the far-right, they vote together with the S&D against it. This creates an interesting dynamic where the S&D, while it does not quite have an alternative like the EPP, at least has allies to push with in the EP dynamics.

Often the Left also votes this way, and this month saw three votes with an “everyone but the EPP” majority. This could be a warning for the EPP: If the left opens up to some targeted majorities with the far-right, some day the EPP could be on the losing side of more polarised European politics.

Heatmap of co-voting behaviour in the September plenary. Note the strong overlap not only of the S&D and Renew, but also of the S&D and the Greens and (to a somewhat lesser extent) the Left.

Public votes in the Council of the EU

For monitoring the Council votes, the analysis builds upon the public votes published, which are always far fewer than the Parliament’s roll-call votes. For September 2026, Council sessions were only picking up later in the month, with only four public votes. Of these, only one was adopted by full unanimity, two with abstentions, which means a 75 per cent consensus rate. A few interesting points stood out:

• Malta abstained on two votes, which is rather unusual. Both votes concerned medical products, and my assumption is that the abstentions were over normative questions.
• Then there was one controversial vote, with four against (Denmark, Luxembourg, Netherlands, and Poland) as well as two abstentions (Austria and Hungary). The vote was on the regulation coordinating social security systems, always a controversial issue. In this case the controversy was about the conflict between free movement and national welfare systems. From my reading, the objections from those voting against or abstaining came for different reasons, so this was not a joint coalition outvoted. This was also a testament to national governments being more willing to close contested files by majority votes, as this vote closed a negotiation on a Commission proposal dating back to 2016. Finally, even with six countries voting against or abstaining, the QMV threshold was still met quite comfortably:

Voting result on the regulation on the coordination of social security systems. Data source: Council of the EU.

Nicolai von Ondarza is Head of the Research Division EU/Europe of the German Institute of International and Security Affairs (Stiftung Wissenschaft und Politik).

EU Analytics is a monthly column by Nicolai von Ondarza. It focuses on data-driven analysis of EU institutional affairs, looking at voting in the European Parliament and the public votes of the Council of the EU. The articles are cross-posted here from Nicolai’s own newsletter on Substack.

Pictures: all graphs: Nicolai von Ondarza; portrait Nicolai von Ondarza: Stiftung Wissenschaft und Politik [all rights reserved].