CURRENT AFFAIRS: What Ceuta actually tested

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On 30 July, more than 50 000 people crossed from Morocco into Ceuta, an autonomous city of Spain on the North African coast. At least 72 people died in the attempt on Spanish soil, and 11 on Moroccan soil. Within 48 hours, the Spanish and Moroccan authorities had restored control, with the very large majority of those who had crossed back in Morocco. On 4 August, the European Council recorded that none had moved on to mainland Spain or to any other Member State (1).

This sequence tells us what was actually tested. The return machinery worked, and it worked for two reasons: an operational readmission channel with Morocco was in place, and the Spanish supreme court had required individual removal procedures instead of summary removal procedures. Individual procedures are not an obstacle to efficient returns but their precondition: summary removals are routinely annulled by courts and refused by countries of readmission, whereas the individualised channel applied in Ceuta reversed almost all crossings within 48 hours. Those are precisely the conditions our opinion on the common European system for returns identified as the preconditions of any credible return policy.

What failed was elsewhere. The governments of 22 EU Member States attributed the crossings to an extraordinary procedure to regularise the status of migrants in Spain – a procedure that had closed one month prior and for which none of the arrivals were eligible. Italy responded by reintroducing controls against secondary movements that the special Schengen regime of the enclaves already makes impossible: no one leaves Ceuta for mainland Spain without an identity check (2).

In response to the above-mentioned EESC opinion, the European Commission insisted that legislation on returns should not be read in isolation but as part of a comprehensive approach covering asylum, legal pathways and integration. The European response to the incident in Ceuta consisted almost entirely of controlling borders and returns – the isolated response the Commission assured did not exist.

In its opinion, the EESC explained that low return rates are not mainly the consequence of missing legal instruments, but the absence of a genuine common policy, the lack of trust among Member States and the outsourcing of responsibility to third countries. Ceuta showed all three at once. A third country opened and closed a border at will, partners treated a Member State under pressure as a suspect, and the Union demonstrated how cheaply it can be divided.

The lesson being drawn from Ceuta is that procedure must give way to deterrence. Yet what was actually available in Ceuta – and what worked – was the opposite: procedure. Solidarity that is conditional on political sympathy is itself a pull factor for third countries that use migration as leverage, and the dead of Ceuta deserve an independent inquiry rather than a quarrel about blame.

(1) European Council, Informal video conference of home affairs ministers, 4 August 2026: https://www.consilium.europa.eu/en/meetings/jha/2026/08/04/.

(2) Declaration by the Kingdom of Spain on the cities of Ceuta and Melilla, point 1(e), Final Act to the Agreement on the Accession of the Kingdom of Spain to the Convention implementing the Schengen Agreement of 14 June 1985 (OJ L 239, 22.9.2000); expressly preserved by Article 41 of Regulation (EU) 2016/399 (Schengen Borders Code).

Cristian PÎRVULESCU (Romania)

Member, EESC Civil Society Organisations' Group

EESC co-rapporteur, SOC/836 – Establishing a common system for the return of third-country nationals staying illegally in the Union

Honorary president, Pro Democrația association (APD)

Chair of the Board of Directors, association Step by Step

Dean of the Faculty of Political Science, National University of Political Studies and Public Administration, Bucharest

© EU/EESC