LEROS
The 2016 Leros Solidarity Plan That Sought to Relocate Refugees to Valencia
The history of European integration is full of "snapshots" where Brussels bureaucracy and the micropolitical calculations of nation states clashed with genuine humanitarian action. But few cases encapsulate this tragic irony as vividly as the February 2016 initiative betweenSouth Aegean Regionand herRegional Government of Valencia (Generalitat Valenciana). It was the moment when two European regions decided to bypass state indifference and practice autonomous humanitarian diplomacy, attempting to transfer 1,000 refugees from the trying islands of the Dodecanese directly to Spain.