The weeks that bridge July and August are a period when the EU buildings around Schuman here in Brussels grow quiet, and correspondents’ group chats go mute. 

But this year the last week of July was far from quiet. While EU spokespersons were cycling through out-of-office messages and the unlucky ones were covering for absent colleagues, tens of thousands of people crossed from Morocco into the Spanish enclave of Ceuta – the largest single-day surge in irregular arrivals ever recorded on EU territory. 

Dozens died. Within two days, the story had stopped being about victims. It had become a story about Europe’s political nerves. 

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