Ceuta Migrant Crisis: Italy Suspends Schengen Agreement with Spain

The Italian government announced on Friday that it was suspending free movement arrangements with Spain under the Schengen Treaty due to the crisis in Ceuta, following the arrival of tens of thousands of Moroccans.

As early as Thursday, the first day of the crisis, Italy had criticized Spain’s actions at the highest political levels through Foreign Minister Antonio Tajani and Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, warning that it would suspend the Schengen Agreement.

“Italy will not stand idly by,” the prime minister stressed, describing the images from Ceuta as “shocking.”

Italy’s foreign minister, meanwhile, wrote in a post that “the images coming from Ceuta show that the Madrid government’s decision to grant Spanish, and therefore European, citizenship to more than 500,000 irregular migrants is profoundly misguided and encourages human trafficking.”

Commenting on the same issue in a post, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said that “we will not allow anyone to enter the EU without complying with our rules,” stressing that “the dangerous crossings must stop immediately and the smuggling networks must be dismantled.”

At the same time, France and Germany pledged to help Spain if it requested assistance. Denmark, on the other hand, through Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen, said the EU should consider suspending the rules of the Schengen Treaty following the events in Ceuta.

On the other side of the Atlantic, Trump chose to use the crisis in Ceuta to attack the Democrats, saying that we should remember this image because “this is what we will be like in three years if the wrong party wins.”

Meanwhile, Spanish authorities reported that at least 57 people had died while trying to reach Ceuta, while the possibility that there were even more victims on the Moroccan side has not been ruled out.

Some of them drowned, while others were trampled during attempts to climb onto the breakwater where the border fence is located.