After
Ceuta, Europe is once again mired in migration chaos of its own making
Published:
August 5, 2026 10.30pm CEST
Europe is
again embroiled in a contentious debate about immigration.
On Aug.
4, 2026, European interior ministers met for an EU-wide crisis meeting on
borders. This followed days of accusations, recriminations and in-fighting
among EU member states over an incident in which approximately 70,000 people
crossed from Morocco to the small Spanish enclave of Ceuta on the North African
coast.
Many swam
several miles in the Mediterranean to avoid the heavily fortified border fence
– leaving 88 people drowned in just 48 hours. While Spanish police escorted
most of the individuals back to Morocco with the help of Moroccan authorities,
the European far right quickly latched on to the episode as fodder to further
fuel its anti-migrant policies.
While
this is not the first time thousands of migrants have crossed into Ceuta, the
moment has sparked a new diplomatic crisis in the European Union, hearkening
back to the 2015 “crisis” when migration likewise threatened to destabilize the
bloc. As in the earlier case, the latest episode was not merely a result of
misinformation or vast numbers of people looking for safety in Europe, but a
reflection of disagreements and lack of coordinated action in Brussels.
What
explains last week’s sudden rise in migration
Moroccans,
especially in the north, have long felt discontent at the disparity between
their local communities and the Spanish enclaves that are only a few miles
apart. Many cite the lack of jobs or educational opportunities as reasons to
migrate. The GDP per capita in Morocco was only US$4,153 in 2024 compared to
$26,774 in Ceuta. This inequality has led some Moroccan “mule women” to haul
goods on their backs for sale in Ceuta under dangerous and even deadly
conditions.
Under
normal circumstances, several thousand migrants cross without documents to the
Spanish enclaves of Ceuta and Melilla each year. From January to April 2026,
2,582 people crossed to Ceuta and roughly 1,000 people claimed asylum.
Observers
have offered various theories as to why that number spiked so high last week.
Pedro
Sánchez, the Spanish prime minister, blamed trafficking groups that spread
rumors online about a recent Supreme Court decision that Spain could not return
people if they arrived by sea. When journalists interviewed migrants, many said
that social media posts sparked hope that they could swim to Ceuta and
eventually travel to Europe for work and a better life.
The
Spanish court decision was wrestling with a difficult legal question: How and
when can migrants apply for asylum when they arrive at Spain’s borders? This
echoes debates addressed by the U.S. Supreme Court in June when it supported
the Trump administration’s pushbacks at the southern U.S. border, arguing that
migrants could not apply for asylum because they had not technically crossed
into U.S. territory. Of course, they were not in the U.S. because the border
guards had pushed them back.
The
Spanish decision was more narrow: It agreed that migrants cannot be pushed back
if they arrive by sea because there were no physical elements to the maritime
border. If the government installed a floating wall extending Ceuta’s border
fence into the sea, which it has now done, then pushbacks would be legal.
Nevertheless,
Spanish police have escorted nearly all migrants back to Morocco, with only
some individuals from non-Moroccan nationalities allowed to apply for asylum
and some unaccompanied Moroccan minors allowed to remain.
Morocco’s
interests
Ceuta,
along with Melilla, have been under Spanish control for four centuries, though
Morocco considers the enclaves to be occupied Moroccan territory.
A man in
a suit stands at a lectern.
Beginning
in the 1990s and increasingly throughout the 2000s, Spain took steps to
strengthen the border fortifications between the enclaves and Morocco,
primarily out of fear that migrants from sub-Saharan Africa would cross into
Melilla or Ceuta en route to mainland Europe.
Morocco
has largely cooperated with the EU to block migration in exchange for large
financial inducements and diplomatic benefits, though that relationship briefly
faltered in 2021 over issues related to the Moroccan-occupied territory of
Western Sahara.
In
retaliation over Spain’s decision that year to permit medical treatment for the
leader of Western Sahara’s Polisario Front, a banned pro-independence group,
Moroccan border guards allowed approximately 12,000 people to cross into Ceuta
over two days. The dispute was overcome only after Sánchez made overtures to
Morocco, acknowledging its rule over the territory.
This time
around, it is similarly unlikely that tens of thousands of individuals would
have been able to cross without the complicity of Moroccan border guards. That
led some observers to speculate that the episode was once again Moroccan
retaliation toward Spanish positioning on the issue of Western Sahara. The
Spanish prime minister visited Algeria, the primary political and financial
backer of the Polisario Front, days before the Ceuta episode.
The
post-2015 paradigm
The July
events also make clear that the EU is operating in the long shadow of the 2015
migration “crisis,” when more than 1 million people arrived in Greece and Italy
from Turkey and North Africa, respectively.
Some
countries suspended the Schengen zone, which allows for the internal free
movement of goods and people across 29 European countries, and restarted border
checks. The European Council adopted a mandatory quota to share the refugee
burden more equitably across all member states, but it fell apart in acrimony
and finger-pointing when Hungary, Poland and the Czech Republic refused to
participate.
For
years, legislation to reform EU migration policy stalled in Brussels, leaving
the EU with one primary policy tool: migration management aid. The EU poured
nearly $6 billion (more than 5 billion euros) in foreign aid to countries
including Morocco to address the “root causes of migration,” but the aid did
not stop migration. Instead, as our new book “Aiding Autocrats” shows, Europe’s
migration aid has empowered authoritarian leaders and risks greater repression.
While
Morocco is often treated as a stable and reliable North African partner by both
Europe and the U.S., Moroccans face an often repressive and dismissive
government that has failed to address the economic concerns of its citizens.
Over the course of the past decade, the government violently crushed popular
protests focused on economic and political demands, such as addressing
unemployment and reducing corruption. Those demonstrations were especially
prominent in the north of the country near Ceuta.
In 2024,
after years of trying, the EU finally agreed upon a much more strict
continentwide immigration plan, helping to solidify the bloc’s move to the
right. The EU Pact on Migration and Asylum, which emphasizes faster
deportations and fewer rights of appeal for asylum-seekers, came into effect in
June 2026.
Impact
across Europe
Italian
Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, perhaps the EU’s leading right-wing immigration
restrictionist, latched onto the Ceuta episode. She claimed that “uncontrolled
illegal immigration poses a real threat to the security of Europe’s borders.”
Italy, along with Finland, Austria, Sweden, Denmark and the Czech Republic,
called for Spain to be suspended from the Schengen zone. Meloni also
reintroduced border checks with Spain, even though Ceuta is not part of the
free movement zone, and Spain and Italy do not share a land border.
The
emergency summit on Aug. 4 continued the pattern of the 2015 political crisis,
after which the EU held more than 20 summits on migration, attempting to corral
member states into coordinated actions.
Ahead of
the latest summit, European leaders argued that Spain’s plan to provide
residency and work permits to 500,000 undocumented migrants had incentivized
last week’s sudden increase in arrivals.
That
would buck historical precedent, however. Both Italy and Greece had large
campaigns to grant legal status to undocumented migrants in the 1990s and
2000s, and researchers found no evidence that so-called regularization
processes led to further undocumented migration. U.S. President Ronald Reagan
also oversaw an amnesty program that legalized nearly 3 million people in 1986
and decreased the number of undocumented migrants for decades afterward.
Following
the EU summit, member states appeared to be placated, and the European
Commission promised to double down on funding for border security, cooperation
with African governments and increased deportations.
Realistically,
however, as long as Europe continues using aid to enhance border security
without addressing underlying issues such as economic disparities and poor
governance in neighboring countries, there will likely be more incidents of
sudden, chaotic, large-scale migration, not less.
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