Italy Suspends Schengen with Spain Amid Migrant Influx from Ceuta

PARIS — Italy’s right-wing government said on Friday it was ending open air and sea transport with Spain in reaction to the sudden influx of tens of thousands of migrants from Morocco into the Spanish exclave of Ceuta in North Africa.

Rome’s move was a signal of wide concerns across Europe — particularly in the 29-country Schengen passport-free travel zone — that Madrid was not doing enough to control the surge of migrants. France also introduced additional border controls.

“The temporary suspension of Schengen with Spain is a necessary choice to safeguard the security of our citizens and defend European borders. A measure provided for by the treaties and made unavoidable today,” Italy’s Foreign Minister Antonio Tajani wrote on X.

Stopping the regular conditions of travel under Schengen is a major step, and Spain will have grounds to contest whether such a measure of last resort is justified.

Almost all of the 50,000 migrants who suddenly poured into Ceuta have now returned to Morocco, and the European Commission confirmed that none had traveled onward to mainland Spain and the Schengen zone.

The Italian-Spanish dispute does, however, reveal strong political fault lines between Europe’s right-wing parties and Socialist Spanish Prime Pedro Sánchez, whose government granted legal status to more than 1 million unauthorized migrants.

Earlier on Friday, French Interior Minister Laurent Nuñez announced he had ordered increased controls at the border with Spain.

In a post on X, Nuñez wrote that local police and military units would be mobilized for the checks, and he commented in an interview with radio station RTL that he was in contact with Spanish authorities. “We have a mobile unit that is on duty around the clock,” he said.

French center-right presidential candidate Édouard Philippe also called for a “European response” to the crisis, but stressed that his country “must immediately strengthen control of our border with Spain. Not a single migrant must be allowed to enter national territory illegally.”

France is part of the Schengen area but has repeatedly renewed its authorization to proceed with temporary internal border checks since the November 2015 Paris terrorist attacks, using provisions in the Schengen Borders Code that allow such measures in response to serious security threats.

Right-wing reaction

The images of people flooding into Ceuta, an autonomous city of about 80,000 people and one of the EU’s only two land borders with Africa, have drawn scrutiny far beyond Paris — especially among right-wing and far-right parties across Europe who seized on the incident to call for heightened restrictions on migration.

However, special rules already apply to Ceuta, and identity checks are carried out when traveling from the exclave to peninsular Spain or other Schengen countries.

“The images coming from Ceuta are shocking and demonstrate, once again, that uncontrolled illegal immigration poses a real threat to the security of Europe’s borders,” Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni wrote on X.

Javi López, the vice-president of the European Parliament and a member of the Socialists and Democrats, called Meloni’s comments “unworthy of a European partner.”

“After 700,000+ arrivals from Libya, Italy received European support, not lectures. Solidarity is not a one-way street,” said López.

Spain blames the crisis on people smugglers. Madrid argues that human traffickers stirred the wave of migrants by making a misleading interpretation of a Spanish court verdict, suggesting it could be easier to gain entry to Europe by swimming across a maritime border.

Austria’s Migration Minister Claudia Bauer told POLITICO her government backed Meloni, and she accused Spain of “effectively handing out entry tickets to the European Union” by granting legal status to unauthorized migrants, calling the scheme a “disastrous decision.”

European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen called the images coming from Ceuta “unacceptable,” saying that Europe “cannot allow anyone to come to our Union without abiding by our rules.”

Calling the Commission’s and Brunner’s support on the matter “encouraging,” German Chancellor Friedrich Merz in a statement said: “ I [welcome] Spain’s intention not to allow the illegal migrants onto the European mainland. We expect Morocco to take back the illegal migrants without delay.”

Meanwhile, Germany’s far-right Alternative for Germany party echoed Meloni, saying Schengen with Spain should be suspended if necessary.

Finnish Interior Minister Mari Rantanen, a member of the right-wing Finns Party, backed the Italian leader on X, accusing Spain of failing to “protect the Schengen Area’s external border from infiltration,” adding that “all European countries must support Meloni’s proposal.”

Sweden’s Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson mirrored those comments, saying his migration minister was “in contact with his Nordic counterparts and does not rule out taking the measures required to ensure that 2015 does not happen again,” referring to another migration crisis when more than 1 million refugees and migrants traveled to Europe, fleeing wars in Syria, Afghanistan and Iraq.

Before Nuñez’s announcement, Marine Le Pen, the leading far-right candidate ahead of next year’s presidential election in France, urged the government to “step up border controls” and vowed to “limit Schengen free movement to EU nationals” if elected president next year.

Conservative French presidential candidate Bruno Retailleau said it was “more than ever necessary” to “ostracize Spain from the European community,” and that the “irresponsible socialist government” led by Sánchez had made the passport-free travel area “untenable.”

Retailleau, who preceded Nuñez as interior minister, said Sánchez had sparked the situation in Ceuta with his move to integrate unauthorized immigrants in April.