EU interior ministers will meet online on Tuesday to discuss a European response to the migration crisis in Ceuta, with options including the reintroduction of internal border controls across Europe and an enhanced role for Frontex, the EU's border agency, during emergency situations. The Brussels apparatus is moving fast. Not to protect people, but to tighten the machinery that decides who gets to move and who gets stopped.
The talks follow around 60,000 non-EU nationals entering the Spanish enclave of Ceuta from Morocco in 24 hours, the largest irregular border crossing ever recorded in Europe over such a short period. Most of those who crossed into Ceuta returned to Morocco on the same day, and the situation had returned to relative calm at the time of writing. But calm for whom? The enclave sits on the African continent, and its special border arrangements make it a choke point for people trying to reach mainland Europe. The images of the mass crossing were enough to trigger the usual reflexes from European governments: more controls, more coordination, more state power.
Brussels Reaches for the Fence
On Saturday, 22 governments sent a letter led by Italy and Denmark calling for Tuesday's meeting to develop a European response to the event. The letter said: "We reiterate our readiness to take any necessary measures, in accordance with Union law and the Schengen Borders Code, to safeguard public order and address risks arising from secondary movements, including through reinforcing or reintroducing temporary internal border controls." That language does a lot of work. "Public order" is the phrase states reach for when they want to turn movement into a threat. "Secondary movements" is the bureaucratic varnish on the same old project: containment.
According to the rules, EU countries can unilaterally suspend Schengen rules at their borders for a limited period in response to a security threat. The suspension can initially last for one month and be renewed for up to six months. In practice, that means increased patrols at border crossing points and a higher number of people being subject to document checks and inspections. Not everyone is checked, though. Controls are selective rather than systematic, which is a neat way of saying the border sorts people by suspicion, appearance and paperwork before it ever pretends to be neutral.
The 27 member states can propose to extend these rules to the whole Schengen area. To do so, a qualified majority must be met, which corresponds to at least 15 countries representing 65% of the European population. The free-movement zone, so often sold as one of the EU's proudest achievements, remains one signature away from being narrowed whenever governments decide the moment suits them.
Frontex and the Management of Movement
The ministers also called for an enhanced role for Frontex in such situations. As an EU agency, Frontex acts at the request of the member state concerned and can provide staff, equipment, expertise and training, among other forms of support. The language is polished. The function is blunt. When the border regime needs more muscle, the agency supplies it.
At least 88 people died during the recent mass influx of migrants into Ceuta from Morocco, Spanish officials said on Monday, though Moroccan officials later presented a lower estimate. That death toll sits in the same story as the calls for stronger border management, because this is what the system produces while it talks about coordination and responsibility. The migration crisis in the Spanish enclave of Ceuta will be the focus of an extraordinary meeting of European Union interior ministers on Tuesday, where Spain will call for a common response from the bloc and respond to criticism from several EU partners, led by Italy and Denmark, following the mass arrival of thousands of migrants from Morocco.
On the eve of the meeting, Foreign Minister José Manuel Albares said in an interview with TVE that Spain will demand "solidarity from all the member states of the European Union" and warned that those who refuse to offer it "are working against Europe." He said Ceuta and Melilla are not only Spanish borders but also external borders of the Union, so the response must be shared. Albares was particularly critical of Italy over its attacks on Spain's handling of the crisis and placed that stance within what he described as a "reactionary international" which, in his view, is trying to exploit migration politically to weaken the European project. He insisted that "the integrity of the Schengen area is absolutely guaranteed" and called for an end to the "deliberate confusion" about how the free-movement area works.
The European Project, With Gates
Albares also highlighted Morocco's cooperation in containing the flow of migrants towards Ceuta and again thanked the Moroccan authorities for their support since the start of the crisis. That cooperation is the border regime in miniature: states on both sides of a line working together to contain people, while calling it order. At the same time, he condemned the rapid spread of false information about the situation in the autonomous city by certain international actors, whom he accused of fuelling disinformation around the management of the border.
The Brussels meeting comes after several days of tension between Madrid and Rome, after proposals by the Italian government to toughen measures against Spain in the wake of the Ceuta crisis, an episode that has reopened the debate on how external borders are managed and on the sharing of responsibilities for migration policy within the EU. The ministers will examine the consequences of the biggest migration crisis recorded in Ceuta in decades, as well as possible support measures for Spain and the coordination of the European response to future episodes of pressure on the bloc's external borders.
European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen reportedly told Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez in a letter seen by Reuters that more must be done to strengthen the EU's borders at critical points. That is the Brussels answer in one sentence: more fortification, more pressure, more management of human movement as a problem to be solved by institutions that created the problem in the first place.