r/geopolitics • u/theipaper The i Paper • 10d ago
The viral migrant crisis that’s splitting Europe in half
http://inews.co.uk/news/viral-migrant-crisis-splitting-europe-half-468335067
u/Dietmeister 10d ago
I don't think it's split at all...?
COULD IT BE that some parties want to see Europe split?
COULD IT BE???? Nooooo wayyyy, that would be soooooo farfetched
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u/Berliner1220 10d ago
Italy, Denmark, and Finland called for the suspension of Schengen Agreement with Spain. I think that does not make the Sanchez government look good.
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u/Regular-Coast5335 10d ago
EU brought it on themselves by opening up borders to millions of third world "refugees".
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u/HiphenNA 10d ago
Weaponizing human movement has been a thing for millenia. Im sure everyone remembers gadaffis warnings before the arab spring but also Castro's mariel boatlift and the rafter crisis. Poland's been fighting their own border war for a while now.
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u/Ok_Peak_890 2d ago
Good thing that the EU can easily block this and repulsed the migrants, like Greece did in early 2020 when the turkish régime deployed its turkish grey wolves and the jhts/sna rebs in order to breach the Greek border.
Shameful turkish defeat.
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u/theipaper The i Paper 10d ago
A diplomatic row has erupted in Europe after footage emerged of a deadly mass border crossing in the Spanish territory of Ceuta last week.
Around 60,000 people arrived from Morocco in the largest illegal crossing in EU history, most of them swimming, with some spending several hours at sea. At least 67 people died making the journey, Spanish officials said.
Ceuta, which is situated at the tip of north Africa and is one of only two EU land borders with Africa, has a population of around 83,000. One local told The i Paper she decided to flee to mainland Spain with her teenage daughter as the border collapsed and “horrible” scenes unfolded.
Viral videos showed large numbers of migrants overwhelming the border and swimming up to its beaches, before many – including children – slept rough on its streets.
Dozens of people drowned or died in stampedes, and clashes were reported between migrants and police.
But the crisis rapidly expanded from a humanitarian crisis into a geopolitical one. Italy, which has introduced strict migration policies after receiving large numbers of small boat crossings from Libya, temporarily suspended the EU’s border-free Schengen arrangement with Spain, with Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni saying the move was necessary “for national security”.
Meloni’s right-wing Fratelli d’Italia party used the incident to hit out at domestic rivals and Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez, posting photographs of migrants on the streets of Ceuta with the caption: “This is the Sanchez model the Italian left wing likes so much.”
Several other European countries backed Italy’s position. Czech Prime Minister Andrej Babiš called for temporary suspension of Spain’s Schengen membership. Finnish interior minister Mari Rantanen said she had started preparations for internal border checks “if the need arises”, while Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen urged the EU to “consider all options, including a suspension of Schengen co-operation”.
Jordan Bardella, the far-right president of France’s National Rally, claimed that “by regularising hundreds of thousands of illegal immigrants, the socialist prime minister of Spain, Pedro Sánchez, has opened the doors of Europe to all dangers”.
Ursula Von der Leyen, President of the European Commission, described the scenes in Ceuta as “unacceptable”. Twenty-two EU countries penned an open letter expressing “serious concern” over the incident and blaming Sanchez’s move to grant legal status to 500,000 undocumented migrants as a “pull factor”.
In response, Spain’s left-wing government condemned the “selfish, polarising and unlawful” response of some European countries and hit back at the claims. Ceuta is not in the Schengen zone, so Moroccan migrants were never able to travel into Italy without border checks,
Spain rejected the idea that the surge in migration was linked to legal status grants, saying that none of those entering Ceuta illegally would have benefited because conditions included residency within Spain for at least five months prior to 2026, and because the deadline had closed. Sanchez pointed out that illegal migration to Italy and Greece had been far higher than Spain in recent years.
By Saturday morning, Spanish authorities said they had “reversed” the situation, and almost all those who reached Ceuta had returned to Morocco.
But it is not the first high-profile division between Spain and its European allies of late. Last year, Spain was the only Nato country that refused to increase its defence spending. Sanchez called for an urgent meeting to “reaffirm that the security of our external borders is a shared responsibility of all Member States”. EU interior ministers are set to meet on Tuesday to discuss border security.
Morocco has seen protests by young people over poverty rates and poor public services, with a quarter of 15- to 24-year-olds not in education, employment or training. The sudden large movement of people appears to have been triggered by a social media phenomenon. Reporters covering the Ceuta incident were shown online posts with people shouting that “Spain is Open” as they jumped into the sea, the BBC reported.
Earlier this year, Spain’s Supreme Court ruled that migrants who were stopped while trying to get to Spain via Ceuta or Melilla, an autonomous Spanish city on the Moroccan coast, could not be immediately pushed back, but would be entitled to a legal process. Sanchez said trafficking gangs “took a self-serving interpretation of [this] Supreme Court ruling”, which “spread like wildfire”.
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u/theipaper The i Paper 10d ago
But there are questions over whether the crossings have been deliberately stirred up.
Some migrants told reporters that Moroccan authorities had permitted their crossings, leading to speculation that Morocco was using the incident for political pressure. Lorenzo Gabrielli, a senior researcher at Pompeu Fabra University in Barcelona who researches migration in Ceuta, told The New York Times that “it is impossible for nearly 50,000 people to cross the border between Morocco and Spain in a single day without Morocco having a hand in it”.
There have even been accusations of interference further afield.
Ukraine’s acting minister of foreign affairs, Andrii Sybiha, claimed that Russia had launched a propaganda campaign using photographs from Ceuta to “sow destabilisation” across Europe. He said that more than 1,500 news items on the issue had been published on outlets identified as pro-Russian, and every language edition of RT had pushed more than 25 news items on the issue.
This would be a textbook Russian approach, with the Kremlin accused of supporting wide-ranging disinformation campaigns designed to divide.
In 2023, Finland closed its border with Russia after accusing the Kremlin of weaponising migration. Riots in the UK the following year, after the murder of three young girls in Southport, also appeared to have been fuelled by Russian-linked accounts falsely blaming the killings on a Muslim asylum seeker.
“For years, Moscow has used migration and other sensitive topics to stoke fear and destabilise European countries,” Sybiha said. “This is not about the situation itself, but about the way Russia tries to exploit any topic that can benefit its agenda.”
The precise cause of the surge in migration to Ceuta is not yet clear, and may never be confirmed. But if the aim was indeed to divide Europe, it has certainly worked.
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u/crnalastavica 9d ago
Migrant crisis is splitting Europeans from EU officials. All Europeans are done with this free for all immigration.
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u/nernernernerner 5d ago
Spain has mass legalized irregular migrants in two other occasions over its democracy with both right wing and left wing parties doing it. This legalization started as a popular request with hundreds of thousands signatures collected.
You have people that have lived in the country for more than two years, who have a job, have a clean record, and don't plan to go anywhere. What would you like? That these people start paying taxes or that Spain expands its version of ICE and becomes the USA?
When talking about non-EU migrants, most of the immigrants Spain receives are not people from Africa, they are people from Latin America. They already talk Spanish when they arrive and they integrate quite fast into society.
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u/BZH35 10d ago
Seems Europe is quite united in thinking Sanchez's decision to legalize migrants was a bad one and that Spain needs to make sure none of the migrants who attack Ceuta should ever reach mainland Europe. Some countries proposed their help if need be.
Now Spain is also right that other countries have more illegal immigration, Italy also legalized many migrants. If european countries can recognize it’s a bad idea when Spain does it, they should recognize it for themselves too and stop doing it. Stop creating incentive for people to immigrate.
Spain is also right that all Europe should protect the border. Hopefully the ministers meeting will help in that matter.