Brussels wants to toughen its migration policy after the Ceuta crisis: "We cannot go back to what was before"

Brussels has turned the migratory crisis in Ceuta into the starting point for a new tightening of European border policy. The Commissioner for Home Affairs and Migration, Magnus Brunner, announced on Tuesday a five-measure plan to anticipate future mass arrivals and respond more quickly when a Member State requests help.

“We cannot continue as before what happened in Ceuta,” Brunner warned. The conservative Austrian leader defined the entry of more than 72,000 people from Morocco during the last days of July as a “stress test” for the European Union. In his opinion, the bloc passed that test, although its difficulty in reacting to a border emergency of such magnitude was exposed.

The announcement comes when irregular entries into the Union as a whole are at their lowest level since 2021. Community data reflect a 55% decrease, but the images from Ceuta have accelerated the restrictive turn that Brussels had been preparing under pressure from conservative governments and the European far-right.

The roadmap includes more powers for Frontex, a permanent body capable of sending agents and teams within 24 hours, new early warning systems, and the monitoring of social networks to detect migratory movements. It also includes sanctions against human trafficking networks and greater cooperation with countries of origin and transit, using economic aid, trade agreements, and visas for this purpose.

Brussels backs the Government while concern for asylum rights grows

Brunner has expressly supported the measures being prepared by Pedro Sánchez's Executive to accelerate the returns of people who remain in an irregular situation in Ceuta. “We support everything the Spanish Government does to return those who remain illegally,” he assured.

The Commission has already granted Spain nearly 115 million euros in emergency aid and has mobilized Frontex, Europol, and the European Union Agency for Asylum. Around 10,000 people remain in the autonomous city, many of them awaiting the resolution of their international protection applications.

The Government has been working for weeks on a royal decree-law to shorten administrative and judicial deadlines. The draft would allow certain files to be resolved without prior examination by the Interministerial Commission for Asylum and Refuge, in which the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees participates, and would facilitate some returns before all appeals are exhausted. The text did not finally reach the Council of Ministers this Tuesday and remains under negotiation.

A dozen organizations, including the Spanish Commission for Refugee Aid, Oxfam Intermón, and the Jesuit Migrant Service, have called for the proposal to be withdrawn. The entities warn that it could create an “exception regime” for the right to asylum and demand that each case retain an individual examination with all guarantees.

Pressure on Ceuta continues as these conversations advance. The National Police evicted between 300 and 400 migrants who were sleeping on Benítez beach this Tuesday and transferred them to the Temporary Foreigners Care Center to identify them and offer them voluntary return to Morocco. Brussels will present its new strategy to the Interior Ministers of the Twenty-Seven in Luxembourg this Thursday.