France and Italy bolstered border controls on Saturday after about 60,000 people crossed into Spain\u2019s enclave in North Africa, sparking one of the largest migrant crises for the European Union\u00a0in recent years.<\/p>\n
The migrants entered Ceuta from Morocco, the enclave\u2019s regional president Juan Jesus Vivas told reporters, but by Friday evening officials said more than 48,000 had returned.<\/p>\n
To cross into Ceuta, many swam around a small border barrier that juts out into the Mediterranean. At least 34 people died in the attempt.<\/p>\n
The sudden influx sparked an international crisis.<\/p>\n
France tightened checks on its border with Spain and said it would increase its police presence there fivefold to 334 officers and gendarmes by Saturday.<\/p>\n
Italy announced it had suspended its Schengen agreement with Spain allowing for visa-free movement between borders.<\/p>\n
Italian officials said the suspension would take effect on Saturday and last for one month.<\/p>\n
Several European countries suggested Spain\u2019s membership in the Schengen free movement zone should be suspended, though Spain\u2019s foreign minister said integrity of the zone was \u201cguaranteed\u201d.<\/p>\n
Across the Atlantic, US President Donald Trump led far-right efforts to seize on the crossing to advance hardline immigration policies.<\/p>\n
\u2013 \u2018Trafficking mafias\u2019 \u2013<\/p>\n
Madrid rushed troops, more police, drones, divers and boats to the outpost that it has run for centuries as Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez and his interior minister visited on Friday.<\/p>\n
Overnight into Saturday, AFP journalists observed groups of young people wandering the beaches and streets of Ceuta. Dozens of men slept on the sand.<\/p>\n
There was a massive police and military presence in the area, and some young people were seen turning back, saying \u201cadios\u201d or \u201cgoodbye\u201d to officers before crossing over the border to Morocco.<\/p>\n
Inside the city, shops were closed and annual fiestas were cancelled.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s catastrophic,\u201d said Mohammed, a local taxi driver and Ceuta resident.<\/p>\n
\u201cSure, we sympathise with them \u2014 they\u2019re having a terrible time in their own country, and all that \u2014 but this isn\u2019t the way to enter a place, nor is it a way to live.\u201d<\/p>\n
Previous migrant surges have occurred during tensions between Spain and Morocco.<\/p>\n
Sanchez visited Algiers on July 20 \u2014 the first such visit by a Spanish head of government in four years \u2014 marking a thaw in relations with Morocco\u2019s rival Algeria.<\/p>\n
But it was not clear if there was any connection between that visit and this latest influx.<\/p>\n
In Ceuta, Sanchez blamed the surge on people-traffickers spreading rumours about a Spanish Supreme Court ruling this month that irregular migrants arriving by sea could not be immediately returned.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat has emerged from our talks with Moroccan authorities is that trafficking mafias took a self-serving interpretation of a Supreme Court ruling,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u2013 Diplomatic fallout \u2013<\/p>\n
Fears of the crowds entering EU member states sparked diplomatic fallout.<\/p>\n
EU chief Ursula von der Leyen called the scenes at Ceuta \u201cunacceptable\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe cannot allow anyone to come to our (European) Union without abiding by our rules,\u201d she said on social media.<\/p>\n
Finland and Denmark on Friday backed Italy\u2019s moves, while German Chancellor Friedrich Merz demanded Morocco \u201ctake back illegal migrants immediately\u201d.<\/p>\n
France and Britain said they stood ready to help Spain with the sudden surge, even as France tightened border checks.<\/p>\n
Portuguese Prime Minister Luis Montenegro said he was considering reinforcing border checks but saw no need to suspend Spain from the Schengen zone.<\/p>\n
Trump, meanwhile, warned: \u201cIt looks like an invasion of a country by hundreds of thousands of people, and that same thing\u2019s going to happen to us if the Republicans don\u2019t get elected, except worse, much bigger.\u201d<\/p>\n
Spain\u2019s Foreign Minister Jose Manuel Albares tried to allay fears, saying it was \u201cnot possible to travel from Ceuta and Melilla to the Peninsula without identifying oneself at a police checkpoint,\u201d referring to Spain\u2019s two North African enclaves.<\/p>\n
\u201cEnough of this deliberate confusion\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u2013 Successive crises \u2013<\/p>\n
Ceuta, a territory of 18.5 square kilometres (seven square miles), and the nearby enclave of Melilla are Europe\u2019s only two land borders with Africa.<\/p>\n
Morocco\u2019s authorities have not yet issued an official statement on the flow of migrants.<\/p>\n
During a similar surge in 2021, more than 10,000 migrants reached Ceuta from neighbouring Morocco over the course of two days during a diplomatic spat between the two countries.<\/p>\n
The row erupted after Spain decided to host for medical treatment a leader of the Polisario Front, whose guerillas\u00a0 fought a long war with Rabat over the independence of the Western Sahara region.<\/p>\n
The crisis ended in 2022 when Madrid reversed its long-standing policy of neutrality and backed Morocco\u2019s plan for Western Sahara \u2014 a move that had caused a diplomatic rift between Madrid and Algiers.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"France and Italy bolstered border controls on Saturday after about 60,000 people crossed into Spain\u2019s enclave in North…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":50632,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[39,40,344,29739],"class_list":["post-107679","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-eu","tag-eu","tag-european-union","tag-international","tag-mna"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/europe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/107679","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/europe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/europe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/europe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/europe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=107679"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/europe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/107679\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/europe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/50632"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/europe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=107679"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/europe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=107679"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/europe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=107679"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}