ICE

If the European Commission truly believes in its own rhetoric about sovereignty, autonomy and values, then the presence of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents at the Milan–Cortina Winter Olympics should trigger alarm bells in Berlaymont offices.

The fact that it has not tells us something deeply uncomfortable about the modern European Union: it talks loudly about power, but shrinks when confronted with it.

Let us dispense with the euphemisms first. ICE is not a neutral “security partner”. It is a domestic enforcement agency forged in the ugliest trenches of America’s culture wars, associated in the European mind with militarised policing, fatal shootings, mass deportations and the erosion of civil liberties. Whether that perception is fair or not is beside the point. Perception is politics — and Brussels understands that better than anyone.

Yet when it comes to Washington, the Commission suddenly develops an incurable case of strategic myopia.

Officials will insist that ICE agents are present only in a “supporting” role, embedded within U.S. diplomatic security teams, operating under Italian authority, with no independent policing powers. This may all be technically correct. It is also politically evasive. The issue is not what ICE agents are allowed to do on paper, but what their presence symbolises — and what Brussels’ silence communicates to European citizens watching closely.

The European Union has spent years lecturing member states about the sanctity of the rule of law, civilian oversight of security forces, and the need to prevent the normalisation of coercive power. It has sanctioned governments, frozen funds, and issued sanctimonious communiqués in defence of these principles. Yet now, at one of the most visible events ever hosted on EU soil, it appears content to look away while a foreign domestic enforcement agency operates in the background.

This is not a technical oversight. It is a choice.

The Commission could intervene if it wished. It could demand transparency over the legal framework governing ICE’s presence. It could insist on EU-level oversight under justice and home affairs competences. It could at the very least make clear that policing — formal or informal — on European soil is not something to be arranged quietly between Washington and individual capitals. That it has not done so is telling.

Why the reluctance? Because confronting the United States requires something Brussels has long lacked: political courage.

The EU likes to speak of “strategic autonomy” as if it were a settled fact. In reality, it remains a slogan — deployed against internal dissent, but abandoned when external pressure arrives. The Commission knows that challenging Washington over ICE would invite diplomatic irritation, media backlash, and uncomfortable questions about Europe’s actual leverage. And so, as ever, it chooses the path of least resistance: silence dressed up as prudence.

This cowardice carries consequences.

By refusing to act, Brussels reinforces the perception that European sovereignty is conditional — robust when disciplining member states, negotiable when dealing with American power. It sends a signal that Europe’s vaunted values are flexible when the partner involved is strong enough. And it leaves Italy politically exposed, caught between domestic outrage and a transatlantic arrangement it did not openly debate.

The damage is not merely symbolic. Trust in EU institutions is already fragile. Citizens who are told daily that Brussels exists to protect their rights and uphold democratic norms will note, with some bitterness, how quickly those assurances evaporate when the issue becomes awkward. The optics are devastating: ICE agents at the Olympics, and a Commission nowhere to be seen.

Defenders of inaction will argue that security remains a national competence, that the Games require extraordinary measures, that this is not the moment to pick a fight with America. These arguments might carry weight if Brussels had not spent the past decade insisting that sovereignty must be pooled, standards harmonised, and national discretion curtailed in the name of the European project. One cannot centralise authority when convenient and decentralise responsibility when uncomfortable.

The truth is that the Commission fears the precedent as much as it fears Washington. If it intervenes here, it sets a standard. If it demands scrutiny now, it will be expected to act again — next time, and the time after that. Silence preserves deniability. Action creates obligation.

But leadership is obligation.

The Winter Olympics are not a marginal footnote. They are a global showcase of Europe’s openness, confidence and political maturity. Allowing them to proceed under the quiet shadow of a foreign enforcement agency — while pretending nothing of consequence is happening — diminishes the Union in the eyes of its own citizens and the wider world.

Brussels still has time to act. It can clarify, assert, and draw clear lines about who exercises authority on European soil. Or it can continue to avert its gaze, issuing bland statements about cooperation while hoping the controversy fades.

If it chooses the latter, it should stop pretending to be surprised when Europeans conclude that the European Commission talks a good game — but when it matters most, it simply does not have the nerve

Centralised, Opaque, Ineffective: The European Commission Under Ursula von der Leyen’s Rule

Main Image: By U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement – Public Domain, via Wikipedia. https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=62348279