The Prime Minister of Portugal, Luís Montenegro, has subtly criticized the Spanish Government’s migration policies, following the recent crisis in Ceuta, reproaching it for the “lack of regulation” to address this phenomenon, which “often has a pull effect”.
“These days we are watching in disbelief the lack of rules, of regulation, for migratory flows, in which some insist on adopting policies that often have a pull effect, they call them without providing the conditions to welcome and integrate them,” Montenegro said, according to Lusa.
A clear allusion to the Spanish Government which, unlike Portugal, is not doing “what must be done,” according to the Prime Minister this Tuesday, on the sidelines of the inauguration of the country’s first private family health unit, in the Lisbon municipality of Torres Vedras.
“In Portugal we are doing what must be done. We are creating conditions so that people have dignity when they arrive in Portugal,” Montenegro emphasized, defining these terms as “having a job, housing and (…) access to health, education, and mobility.”
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Last week, about 70,000 people entered Ceuta irregularly in just 24 hours, causing a migration crisis that the Spanish Government now considers resolved after returning practically all of them to Morocco.
This Tuesday, EU interior ministers met to address what happened and agreed to strengthen borders and response measures to prevent such situations from occurring in the future.
Likewise, amid criticism of Spain from some European partners such as Italy and the Nordic countries, Brussels also stressed this Tuesday that they do not see “a direct link” between regularization policies and what happened last week in Ceuta.
