Dubravka Šuica Got Europe's Hardest File: a Balkan Politician Has to Calm Ceuta Down

When Europe has to resolve a crisis in which over sixty people died in a single day, and Italy suspends Schengen with Spain, the question of who holds the phone line to Rabat is not a matter of protocol. Ursula von der Leyen entrusted that to Dubravka Šuica, the European commissioner for the Mediterranean - a politician from Dubrovnik, from this part of the world of ours.

„Dubravka Šuica is in contact with her Moroccan counterpart. I am convinced our close partnership with Morocco will help achieve concrete results“, von der Leyen announced. In parallel, home affairs commissioner Magnus Brunner is coordinating operational support, including assistance from Frontex.

Šuica has held the Mediterranean portfolio since December 2024. It covers the Union's relations with its southern neighbours - Morocco among them - partnerships, security cooperation and the external dimension of migration policy. In other words: precisely this crisis, and nobody else in the Commission sits closer to it.

A Balkan biography at the European summit

The road here starts in 1990, with joining the HDZ, continues through the mayoralty of Dubrovnik and then the European Parliament. In 2019 she became a candidate for vice-president of the European Commission responsible for democracy and demography, then vice-president of the European People's Party, and finally commissioner for the Mediterranean.

The road is not without shadows. Croatian media have for years written about assets worth over five million euros, about disputed public spending - including a renovation remembered as „the golden toilet“ - about the construction of a golf course on Srđ and about a break-in at the family home. Her political style is also remembered for the line: „Nobody can be a bigger Croat than me and my colleagues from the HDZ.“

That is a sentence anyone in the Balkans recognises, regardless of which side of the border they heard it on. Around here it is called patriotism when our man uses it and nationalism when somebody else's does.

What this means for the region

The most interesting part is not the biography but the job. The Mediterranean portfolio also covers external migration policy - the same logic by which the Union negotiates borders, returns and „partnerships“ with third countries. The Balkans are not Morocco, but the Balkan route knows the same procedure: Brussels pays, the neighbour guards, and when the neighbour takes offence, the border happens to open.

Will a politician from the region at Europe's top table see it differently from her predecessors? Or is the post stronger than the biography, and in the end the same template applies? The answer will not come from Brussels statements, but from what happens at the Ceuta border the next time Rabat wants something.