Spain blames ‘criminal mafias’ for Ceuta mass border crossing as EU offers ‘solidarity’
by https://euobserver.com/author/benjamin-fox/ · EUobserverCeuta is one of two Spanish enclaves on the north African coast (Photo: pedrobea)
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By Benjamin Fox,
Spain blamed “criminal mafias” for last week’s storming of the border at Ceuta, the city which borders Morocco, but insisted that almost all of the 72,000 migrants who breached the border had been returned to Morocco.
Speaking after an emergency meeting of EU home affairs ministers on Tuesday (4 August), Spain’s interior minister Fernando Grande-Marlaska said about 72,000 migrants entered Ceuta last Thursday and Friday, and that around 70,000 had since returned.
“We are in the process of resolving the legal status of those who remain in Spain, and those who are not entitled to stay will be returned in accordance with Spanish and international law,” he said.
He also described the outcome of Tuesday’s extraordinary meeting as “satisfactory” and said it “served to recognise Spain’s efforts”.
The border storming has caused a major diplomatic row, with Italy, Finland and Denmark calling for Spain’s membership of the Schengen free movement area to be suspended.
France imposed additional controls at its land border with Spain, while the government of Meloni suspended the Schengen border-free travel agreement with Spain for one month, reintroducing temporary border checks.
After the emergency meeting of EU home affairs ministers on Tuesday, EU migration commissioner Magnus Brunner told reporters that the events “were a test of our European resilience on the one hand and of the security of our external borders”.
He added that “there was full solidarity with Spain” from EU ministers and that the online meeting had been a “useful opportunity to clarify the facts on the ground”.
"Europe, I think, has definitely passed this test. People did not manage to enter the Schengen area, and security at the border was resolved quickly," he added.
“When it mattered, the situation was brought back under control,” he also said.
Though a group of EU leaders had accused Spain of negligence in policing the border, and 22 of the EU-27 signed a joint letter demanding far stricter controls of the bloc’s external borders.
Spanish and EU officials attributed the crossing to criminal smuggling networks and disinformation, falling short on providing details.
Madrid, meanwhile, has urged Rabat to investigate the events behind the mass crossing into the enclave of Ceuta.
'Dramatic images beat the best statistics'
In June, new stricter EU rules on detention and deportation of rejected asylum seekers and economic migrants came into force. They give police forces sweeping powers of arrest and detention.
Brunner was also at pains to point to statistics showing a sharp drop in irregular migrant numbers.
He told reporters that illegal migration had decreased by 55 percent over the past two years and that just over 49,000 irregular migrants had crossed into EU territory this year, which, he said, was roughly the same number as crossed to the Greek islands in a single week in 2015.
In Germany, numbers are down by more than a third this year, Sweden registered the lowest numbers in 40 years
“By any measure, Europe has not had this much control over illegal migration in a decade,” said Brunner.
However, the Austrian commissioner conceded that “the events in Ceuta show that dramatic images beat the best statistics.”
Brunner said that the EU executive had provided emergency financial support to Spain and that the bloc’s border agency Frontex now had more than 30 people in Ceuta.
Officials from Europol and the EU’s asylum agency were also ready to assist, he said.
The border storming was the biggest crisis at the Spanish enclaves on the African continent since 2021 and could have major implications for Morocco’s relations with the EU.
Morocco has emerged as the EU’s most reliable ally in North Africa in recent years, but Brunner hinted at the price which Rabat could face.
“We need to use our leverage ...we are currently in the process of negotiating a strategic partnership agreement with Morocco...and migration is one of the core elements of this agreement,” he said.
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Ceuta is one of two Spanish enclaves on the north African coast (Photo: pedrobea)
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Author Bio
Benjamin Fox is our trade and geopolitics editor. His reporting has also been published in the Guardian, the East African, Euractiv, Private Eye and Africa Confidential, among others. He is based in Nairobi, Kenya, although he often reports from London.
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