PREVIEW
Emergency talks in Brussels this week could see Spain becoming the scapegoat for a border breach with continental implications
Morocco deployed armed forces with water cannon over the weekend, while the Spanish government reinforced the border fence at its exclave of Ceuta, as both sides face the diplomatic damage of border storming by thousands of migrants.
Spain is facing most of the anger from EU members for the mass border crossing – some 49,000 migrants crossed into Spanish territory, a process that left at least 19 dead in the Mediterranean Sea – but Morocco’s standing with the EU has been badly damaged. The forced crossing is the most serious crisis in the Spanish exclaves on the African continent since 2021 (AC Vol 62 No 12, Spain feels M6's fury).
Of the EU-27, 22 states signed a joint letter demanding far stricter controls of the bloc’s external borders, while Italy, Denmark and Finland have called for Spain to be suspended from the the EU’s Schengen passport free travel area. That will be on the agenda when EU home affairs ministers hold an emergency meeting in Brussels on Tuesday (4 August).
The border crossing is likely to lead to even tougher EU restrictions on the central and eastern Mediterranean route. It may make it harder for Morocco to convince the EU-27 that it should be given more privileged trading status.
Spanish officials say that the mass crossing may be the result, in part, of a Spanish Supreme Court ruling that migrants on boats intercepted by the EU’s border force Frontex cannot be summarily returned.
Last week, the EU commission agreed to set up a migrant relocation centre in Benghazi, the eastern power centre of Libyan warlord Khalifa Haftar. That follows more than a year of talks with officials in both Tripoli and Benghazi with the EU executive. EU Ambassador to Libya, Nicola Orlando, said on 30 July that the new Maritime Rescue Coordination Centre (MRCC) would also help curb arrivals on one of Europe's busiest migration routes.
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