MEP Isabel Serra to The New Arab: Europe is becoming a 'war project'

Isabel Serra has been a member of the European Parliament since 2024 as part of the Left group and is currently vice-chair of its subcommittee on human rights. 

Before joining the European Parliament, she was a member of the Spanish parliament, where she was re-elected twice. 

Serra also served as spokesperson for Spain's left-wing Podemos party and worked as an adviser to Spanish Equality Minister Irene Montero between 2021 and 2023.

Serra belongs to the left-wing movement and is considered by some to be part of the most radical wing of the Spanish political scene. 

She has made human rights, migration, Palestine, anti-racism and anti-colonialism central to her political work in the European Parliament. In an interview with The New Arab, Serra strongly criticises the European project, which is undergoing major transformations, most notably, she says, its transformation "into a war project".

She places Palestine at the heart of these transformations, arguing that Brussels' position on the genocidal war in Gaza reveals its deep complicity with Israel and the European Union's subordination to US President Donald Trump and the United States.
 

The Ceuta incident has brought migration to the forefront of European debate. As a member of the European Parliament, how do you explain what happened, and what responsibilities does the European Union bear?

The crisis has so far left 141 people dead, while dozens remain missing. At this moment, thousands of people are sleeping in the streets in inhumane conditions, without adequate care, and many of them are minors. This is the most important issue, and all institutions must address it.

Nevertheless, we see how the far right in general, as well as institutions such as European institutions, which are directly or indirectly run by the far right, have not issued any message to the victims' families. If they had been white, European people from Ukraine, for example, we would have had months of condolences and mourning. But because they are dark-skinned and come from the Global South, this situation suits the far right and the European Commission perfectly, allowing them to justify greater Frontex involvement and more anti-migrant rhetoric.

Of course, 70,000 people cannot cross the border without incitement or even facilitation by the Moroccan regime, a regime that has condemned its people to poverty and unemployment, illegally occupies Western Sahara and systematically uses violence against the Sahrawi people.

This is the same regime that has important agreements with the United States and Israel, which will become stronger over time. But at the same time, there is something I think it is important to point out in light of the public debate over the past few days: I do not favour this pro-Spanish government discourse, framed in nationalist terms, which portrays an operation by Trump, Morocco and Israel to destabilise Sanchez and Spain, targeting our sovereignty and territorial integrity, ultimately adopting the terms "invasion" and "hybrid war", and claiming that the most important thing is to defend our sovereignty.

According to this discourse, Spain is a victim of Morocco. Migrants are merely tools, and the most important thing is protecting the border and sovereignty.

These narratives ignore the fact that Spain, whether the right-wing People's Party or the Spanish Socialist Workers' Party, has always maintained the best possible relationship with Morocco and its regime, which has committed injustices against the Moroccan people.

These narratives ignore the fact that people from the Global South have died. They also ignore that Morocco influences because it is a stronghold for the United States and Israel but, at the same time, is simply another country in the Global South.

The problem is that the politicisation of borders not only empowers countries such as Morocco but also constitutes violence against peoples so that Europe can continue claiming to protect human rights while pushing others to violate them.

In short, I do not support this nationalist narrative that equates the Moroccan regime with those suffering under its rule. These people are the working class with whom we should stand in solidarity, build alliances and confront this colonial, imperialist, capitalist world that is becoming increasingly inhumane.

Has the European model of border control failed?

The model of politicising borders generates systematic violence and death. It is a model in which countries in the Global South are blackmailed into militarising their borders and building detention centres for people fleeing terrible circumstances in exchange for aid and development funding.

It is a catastrophic and failed model, not because it threatens our territorial integrity, but because it involves the use of violence against people. The European Union is increasingly promoting this model.

The current project of this European government, in which social democracies and the far right share power, is a war project. War with Russia is one side of it, while the other is war against migrants.

It is a project based on the idea that Europe – this Western civilisation – is threatened by Russia and by those who want to come here, to the countries of the continent, to live and work.

In the face of this situation, everything must be militarised. For this purpose, companies are making enormous fortunes manufacturing weapons for Ukraine, in addition to drones to monitor people and security systems as well. They are useful for everything.

So, this is the current project: more border surveillance. But there is pressure on other countries to do this work, to the point that countries aspiring to join the European Union must first pass a review of agreements with Frontex, the European Border and Coast Guard Agency, and, in general, migration monitoring.

If they behave properly–that is, if they do not violate human rights on a large scale–they can join.

But there is something very important: Why does the far right adopt this agenda, this project, which is being implemented by both Trump and Ursula von der Leyen?

Well, first of all, I do not want them to prevent people from coming, but they want them to arrive in the most submissive, disciplined and dehumanising ways possible.

If you have to endure everything to get here, and you are among the few who were lucky enough to make it, you will accept anything here. Notice, I am not saying migrants will accept anything, but the entire institutional system is designed to achieve that.

Then the migrant will work from sunrise to sunset for low wages, while Spanish employers will exploit them to exhaustion to take all the profits, the surplus value.

It is a mechanism of class oppression through racism. Migration laws, such as Spain's shameful law, which deprives people of their rights and condemns them to precarious and unpaid work for years until they obtain residency, serve this purpose.

This is why I am deeply angered by the pro-Spanish government discourse that ignores Spain's colonial position towards the Global South and its racist position towards those who want to cross and those who arrive there.

So, this is the main function: exploitation and overexploitation.

It is globalised capitalism that exports companies to poor countries in the global South to extract greater profits by stealing natural resources and exploiting workers, and also by importing undocumented workers, thereby producing more undocumented workers.

Moreover, if these narratives generate intense hatred towards a scapegoat, you make people stop looking upwards and recognise that the person exploiting them is their boss and that the one plundering them is the greedy investment fund.

This is how they come to hate those at the bottom of the social ladder, and society becomes more authoritarian in the absence of a working class driven by the shared interests that unite us all, whether we are white or Black, men or women

How do you assess the Spanish government's reaction to Ceuta crisis and the reactions of some EU countries, such as Italy and Finland, which proposed excluding Spain from the Schengen area?

I never imagined that I would one day agree with Margarita Robles, the Spanish defence minister, more than anyone else in the Spanish government.

It seems to me that if we want to confront Trump, we must take a firm position: support the right to self-determination for Western Sahara; defend the need for legal and safe corridors; question Europe's role in the Global South throughout history; and clearly affirm that the migration of people to the Global North is the result of the North plundering the resources of the South and that it continues to do so.

We must also defend freedom of movement and the right to migrate as a universal right. We must cut ties with Israel, which supports Morocco, and stop selling weapons to and buying weapons from a state committing genocide.

We cannot afford to be afraid in ideological debates. The far right is attacking with all its might, and the world is changing. We have reached a point of no return. Nothing will return to how it was. Therefore, it is absurd to defend what prevailed in past decades.

That world and the international order that prevailed after the Second World War, a world shaped by fascism and the Holocaust, no longer exists. It was built on those events, while naturally ignoring other events, such as the genocides and Holocausts suffered by other peoples.

From this construction and from those narratives, such as the claim that the Jewish people were the only people to suffer, or the people who suffered the most, we live as we do today.

But in conclusion, I believe there is no room for half-measures. I believe we must be consistent.

I also believe that what Spain and its government urgently need is to guarantee the rights of people living in appalling conditions in Ceuta and, of course, not deport anyone against their right to seek asylum and not return any unaccompanied child.

They have the right to be treated and cared for by Spanish institutions exactly like any child born in Spain. Clearly, human rights violations are being committed, as many non-governmental organisations have reported

As vice-chair of the Subcommittee on Human Rights, do you believe that the European Union adheres to the values it claims to defend?

It is becoming more difficult day by day. Even European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen no longer hesitates to express this. 

For example, after Trump's and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's illegal attack on Iran, von der Leyen said that "the old order is no longer valid" and asked, "Why defend international law?"

There is no doubt that von der Leyen stands alongside a system whose perpetrators are committing genocide. Naturally, she does not defend international law, because in the case of Iran, for example, this essentially means defending Iran's right to defend itself against an illegal attack by another state. 

By the way, this is a right Israel does not have because it is a state occupying the territory of another state.

The same applies to the European Union's cooperation and development policy. Commissioners are no longer ashamed to acknowledge that development aid, or official development assistance, is not intended to lift any country out of poverty but rather to provide an institutional bridge for European private companies to plunder the resources of the Global South, in Africa, for example.

And now they say it openly: we want to compete with China, and we will do everything we can to achieve that. We will demand that African countries militarise their borders if they want funding (part of the budget will be allocated for this purpose), and in return, our companies will plunder their resources. This is exactly what they are doing.

They have always done this, but at least they used to hide their actions. Now they are doing it openly and in broad daylight, without shame and with growing enthusiasm.

As for migration policies, note that they have recently succeeded in passing the return law. It is not fundamentally different from what Trump is doing in the United States through mass deportations. We are facing a policy of mass deportation.

Just as Trump puts migrants in Guantanamo, in Europe they will soon put them in other countries known for human rights violations. This means torture, human trafficking and forced labour.

These are not the actions of the mafias or networks they refer to in their rhetoric. They are the actions of the states they pay to do this: Egypt, Libya, Turkey and Mauritania, for example.

With the new laws, it will become easier: families, children, people imprisoned for more than two years, and people fleeing wars started by the West and its allies, such as Israel, will be imprisoned for years.

Nothing remains of what Europe once claimed to be. Nevertheless, if you look a little deeper, you will see that even that was a great lie. The Western civilisation they fiercely defend was built on the extermination of indigenous peoples, on the colonisation of other peoples, and on describing these peoples as "barbarians".

The far right did not have to invent much. It only had to read the history books on European colonialism: the few books that tell the truth about how things happened.

Palestine occupies a central place in your political work. In your view, why does the European Union always fail to take effective action against Israel?

It fails because it does not want to get it right on this particular issue. The European Union wants to be a partner of Israel because it is an extension of the West, or rather its outpost in what they incorrectly call the "Middle East".

Palestine does not matter to them, and they do not care about it. It matters to them only insofar as it serves their interests in waging wars. 

For example, in the US-Israeli war against Iran, in strengthening American imperialism, to which Europe is subordinate, and in suppressing the rights of European peoples and restricting their freedom.

Look at what Germany, France and Britain have done against protesters supporting the Palestinian people. They have implemented policies criminalising them. It is as though civil and fundamental rights no longer exist.

And now what? Will they imprison us simply for saying: long live a free Palestine?

We cannot allow them to move towards this form of authoritarianism, mass surveillance and control over people through social media networks and artificial intelligence.

At the heart of all this, there is also the sanctions policy imposed by the European Union, which does not receive enough public discussion. The EU imposes these sanctions on organisations it describes as terrorist because of their positions in defence of Palestine.

We must talk about all of this. There is a mistaken belief that the European Union is a neutral democratic entity and a standard-bearer for human rights.

The European Union is run almost entirely by technocrats. They are ultimately politicians, and many of them are from the right and far right, and they are embracing the extremist ideological project day by day.

Their only project is war, colonialism and imperialism. They are obsessed with competing with China. They are not very different from Trump, at least Ursula von der Leyen and EU High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy Kaja Kallas.

Their war project needs Israel, its war machine, its weapons and security systems, and its position in West Asia.

What steps have you and the Left blocs in the European Parliament taken for Palestine, and what obstacles have you faced in imposing sanctions on Israel?

Waging the political battle. This is the most important thing. And contributing to raising public awareness of what is happening and of what its "democratic institutions" are doing.

We have strengthened and expanded the solidarity movement with Palestine and launched a campaign for the European Union to cancel its association agreement with Israel.

We cannot stop talking about Palestine. Nor can we settle for a social democracy that says one thing and does the opposite: not only continuing trade with Israel but also expanding contracts under the pretext of rearmament and provoking wars.

Palestine is a cause of humanity. It is the centre of the struggle and resistance for broader struggles against racism, colonialism and imperialism.

These struggles will become more violent in the next phase because we are living in a time when elites and capital owners have decided to reorganise themselves and reshape the world into a more unequal form.

Therefore, the struggle for Palestine is a space and an arena for raising awareness among new generations and politicising them. The young generations fighting for Palestine today are likely to be decisive in determining the next phase and the shape of the world to come.

Do you believe that the European Union can formulate an independent policy towards the Middle East from US influence?

No. The European Union has made its decision. It has decided to be obedient and subordinate to Trump and the United States and to its imperialist project.

Now, could there be another Europe? With a different European Commission and different governments? Perhaps. But unfortunately, at present, the project of the far right and European capitalist elites dominates the European project.

The real problem is that the European Union is not what we want it to be. Since its establishment under the Maastricht Treaty, the Dutch treaty, in 1992, it has remained a structure designed to serve certain elites and specific countries.

For example, Germany, thanks to the European Union, has greater influence than the rest of the EU countries, as the EU mechanism has contributed to pushing some countries towards deindustrialisation and the loss of a more advanced productive model.

Other countries were assigned an economic model based on construction and tourism: speculation in the housing market, the consequences of which we are experiencing today with the housing crisis and the sun-and-beach economy.

Here I am specifically talking about Spain. I could give other examples.

The European Union is not a union serving its European peoples. It is quite the opposite. Today, this European project is becoming a war project.

And we are now in urgent need of a peace project. An anti-imperialist project that builds alliances with other forces and peoples, such as Palestine, and pushes Europe in the opposite direction to the path it is taking today.

Hundreds of thousands of citizens across Europe have mobilised for Palestine, while EU institutions have maintained a more cautious position. Is there a gap today between European states and their peoples?

Absolutely. We have witnessed enormous crowds. Yes, a majority of Europeans are with Palestine, regardless of what their governments do, whether they oppose them or not.

I think the Vuelta a España cycling race was a powerful moment (in 2025, against the backdrop of the participation of an Israeli team). We stopped it; we boycotted it. We, the people, did that while our government continues to trade with Israel.

People are facing legal action for mobilising for Palestine. But we must continue. In fact, I think it is impossible to understand Trump's colonial peace plan without recognising the Zionist goal of dismantling the international solidarity movement.

Huge crowds have mobilised for Palestine in many countries. 

I think we must understand that through mobilisation and participation in politics in their true sense and in an organised way like this, we can change everything and that we have no other option.

I also think the issue of Iran showed that the United States is not an absolute power but is weak and vulnerable to defeat and does not have everything in its favour, even if it resorts to undemocratic methods to remove elected governments and install its proxies, whether in the Middle East or Latin America.

We are witnessing the rise of the far right in many European countries, which has clearly affected European policies, whether on security or migration. Do you believe the identity of the European Union is changing?

There is no doubt that the European project is now under threat, and this is not solely because of the far right. It is enough to look at Germany, which is adopting a clear strategy based on militarism, to see this.

It is enough to read its recently published national strategy (rearmament and building the strongest army in Europe). Germany is not only now forcing its citizens to return to military service but is also implementing austerity policies because rearmament will inevitably lead to cuts in spending.

In addition, they are talking about a major war against Russia in 2029. Russia and its invasion of Ukraine have strengthened the EU's war system as a pretext, particularly for Germany, which is seeking economic and political gains.

The problem is that this path will lead to greater divisions between EU countries, and we will reach a point where the project becomes unable to protect the interests of those who wanted to establish it.

We must add to this the contradictions of the far right itself: it says it defends the nations of Europe, their interests and sovereignty, but in reality it defends the interests of the United States and Israel.

Therefore, I believe the European project will face major tensions in the coming years.

As for the philosophical foundations on which the Union was built, they are also collapsing. And this goes beyond human rights and this hypocritical narrative. I am referring to the idea of progress itself, which was central to modernity and the European Enlightenment.

This idea is based on the notion that what we are and what we can become are not the same thing and that there is a gap between them based on aspirations. This gap has widened, partly because of technological progress, but also because of political and cultural changes.

For example, comprehensive education, which could have made us better at managing our relations with others through diplomacy and democracy, is now threatened by the narrative that war is inevitable.

Climate change has also led many people today to feel that they may die before reaching old age. This is a major transformation in European societies.

There are also many, many other changes. This change may not be as pronounced in countries that have experienced wars for which the West was responsible. Perhaps other countries, such as China and others, do not experience the same degree of a sense of decline, collapse and fear.

But this feeling is growing in our European societies at a time when the elites are not offering a better alternative. Therefore, we, the peoples of Europe, must work with the peoples of the Global South to build a better alternative.


What is the biggest threat to democracy in Europe today?

Ursula von der Leyen and the tendency towards racial and ethnic supremacy, whether it is Israel's racial and ethnic supremacist tendency or that of the racist far right as a whole, which portrays black people and migrants as enemies, a source of problems and the cause of every disturbance.

Likewise, the social democracies, which, in the face of the seriousness of the situation the world is experiencing today, have decided to remain silent, turn a blind eye to what is happening, or follow those who are leading us towards the abyss.

Article translated from Arabic by Afrah Almatwari. To read the original, click here.