Spain Urges Morocco to Strengthen Border Controls Amid Migrant Crisis in Ceuta

Faced with the migration crisis caused by the massive arrival, at the beginning of last week, of more than 8,000 migrants in Ceuta, including mostly minors, Spain has called on Monday Morocco to strengthen border controls, reports AFP.

For Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez, speaking at a European summit in Brussels, the laxity of border controls at the Moroccan level has "caused an unprecedented crisis in recent years between the European Union and Morocco." "The relationship between the EU and Morocco, between Spain and Morocco, is strategic [...] but it must be based on two fundamental pillars: trust and respect, particularly with regard to the borders of Europe and those of Spain in Ceuta and Melilla," he said, adding that it is important to "remind Morocco that it has no better or greater ally within the EU than Spain to defend the strategic interests that matter to it."

According to a spokesman for the Spanish Ministry of the Interior, the Spanish enclave had, as of Monday, May 17, about a thousand migrants, unaccompanied minors abandoned in the streets or taken care of by migrant centers that are studying on a case-by-case basis the possibility of their return to Morocco or their stay in Spain. The authorities of Ceuta, for their part, estimate the number of migrants who have arrived on its territory at 10,000. In total, some 7,500 people have already been repatriated to Morocco, the Interior spokesman said, without specifying the number of minors.

Tensions have risen between Spain and Morocco since the arrival in April on Spanish soil of Brahim Ghali, the leader of the Polisario Front, for "humanitarian" reasons. The crisis is "on the way to being resolved," said Juan Carlos Campo, the Spanish Minister of Justice, on Monday.