Ceuta, a Pretext for an All-European Row

On 30 July 2026, between 50,000 and 60,000 people tried to reach the Spanish enclave of Ceuta in North Africa. At least 88 died and many remain missing. What these events really show is how restrictive migration policies create huge risks to human lives. Where regular migration pathways do not exist, people must choose between a dangerous route and no route at all.

Davide Colombi from the Brussels-based Centre for European Policy Studies (CEPS) writes that the tragedy was exploited, in a matter of hours, to cast doubt on Spain’s regularization policy, question Schengen, demand greater control by third countries and pursue wider geopolitical disputes.

These arguments justify irrational fears about migration and mainly play into the hands of the far right.

In Spain, the Partido Popular’s secretary-general Miguel Tellado said that nobody could be surprised that thousands wanted to enter a country that regularizes one million people ‘overnight’. Vox leader Santiago Abascal went further, describing the crossings as an ‘invasion’ and naming Spain’s prime minister Pedro Sánchez its promoter.

Italy’s foreign minister Antonio Tajani wrongly claimed that Madrid had granted Spanish – and therefore European – citizenship to more than 500 000 ‘irregular migrants’.

In fact, the Spanish extraordinary regularization program ran from 16 April to 30 June 2026 and provided a one-year residence and work authorization – not nationality – to people who had arrived in Spain before 1 January 2026. The application window closed a month before anyone entered the water in Ceuta.

Rather than showing solidarity with Spain, EU governments used the event to justify further attacks on Schengen and score political points, domestically and in Brussels. They were in fact playing into the far right’s agenda.

Ceuta has vividly shown the risks of delegating migration control to third countries. Morocco has received substantial EU funding, including for migration and border management. The net result is that Morocco’s political priorities shape how and when this border is controlled.

Further externalization of the migration policy, particularly through migrant return hubs in third countries, worsens the EU’s dependence on those countries’ governments. It gives them greater leverage and exposes people to even more violence and danger.

Ceuta’s political exploitation has extended well beyond Spain’s relationship with Morocco. In the USA Elon Musk, Vice-President JD Vance and the Department of Homeland Security used the disaster to attack Spain’s migration policy. These reactions come amid preexisting tensions between Washington and Madrid over NATO spending and Spain’s stance in the Iran conflict.

The EU failed to confront directly the conditions that led people to cross from Morocco into Ceuta. No one even tried to assess the implications of the European Union’s own restrictive migration policy. Instead, European leaders leveraged Ceuta to attack their political opponents, weaken Schengen, promote further externalization – that essentially leads to nowhere, – and fuel unrelated disputes.

All that clearly demonstrated that European leaders gradually cease to fit the mold of world-class statesmen who can rise above an issue and find rational solutions. They increasingly turn into marginal politicians who find it easier to stage a row from scratch to serve their own, often quite parochial, interests.

Original publication: https://www.ceps.eu/ceuta-reveals-migration-policies-hypocrisies-and-far-right-fuelled-fears/