The Government has urged Italy to lift the suspension of the Schengen area imposed after the migration crisis in Ceuta more than a week ago and has given it a deadline of two days, until Sunday, August 9, to do so or, if not, “Spain will be forced to take proportionate measures to protect the interests and dignity of its citizens.”
Government sources have urged Giorgia Meloni’s Government to reverse its stance, “end the controls and treat Spaniards like the rest of European citizens.”
The Spanish Government has denounced that on August 1 Italy reintroduced “border controls with Spain,” which has affected “the mobility of thousands of passengers and generated legal uncertainty during the peak summer period.”
At Moncloa, they have recalled that the measure has been carried out “without precedent in recent history”, as well as being adopted “without prior notice, unilaterally, and with spurious arguments that do not comply with either the Schengen Borders Code or the truth.” “It is unfair, contrary to the interests of the EU, and discriminatory against the Spanish population,” they reiterated about the initiative.
The Executive has insisted that Meloni ignores that none of the migrants who entered Ceuta irregularly last week “could nor can freely enter the Schengen area because the autonomous city” has “a special regime within it.” They have also emphasized that the “vast majority” of illegal migrants “have already returned to Morocco.”
As Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez pointed out, sources have also indicated that Italy is, according to Frontex, the “Member State that has recorded the most irregular crossings in recent years, with figures that have doubled those of Spain” and that its Government, since 2022, “does not comply with the Dublin Regulation, generating an additional burden of migratory pressure on the rest” of European countries.
Despite this, the Spanish Government has defended that “it has never introduced controls for Italy and “has always shown solidarity,” hosting “part of the migrants who arrived in Lampedusa in 2023 and repeatedly opening its ports to migrants rescued on the central Mediterranean route.”
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