Ceuta reveals migration policies hypocrisies and far-right-fuelled fears - CEPS

Contributing sentiments towards policy:

58% : Ahead of the meeting, Meloni pressed for EU-funded return hubs in third countries modelled on Italy's 'Albania model'.
58% : Morocco has received substantial EU funding, including for migration and border management.
52% : Such controls must be motivated, proportionate and a last resort, but years of inaction from the European Commission have normalised disproportionate and prolonged internal border controls.
47% : The Schengen Borders Code allows for Member States to reintroduce internal border controls in response to an unforeseeable serious threat requiring urgent action.
47% : The reactions within the EU have shown how readily political fears surrounding migration - long cultivated by those now instrumentalising them - can divide the Union.
46% : After Spain admitted Western Sahara's Algeria-backed Polisario Front leader, Brahim Ghali, for medical treatment in 2021, Moroccan border controls eased and around 8 000 people entered Ceuta.
42% : This reveals the broader problem with externalisation, in Morocco, Libya, Tunisia, Turkey and elsewhere: the EU finances border control but it can't - and often chooses not to - check how these controls are conducted.
41% : Rather than confronting the conditions that led people to enter the water and at least 88 of them to die - including the EU's own restrictive migration policies - political leaders leveraged Ceuta to attack their opponents, weaken Schengen, promote further externalisation and fuel unrelated disputes.
39% : Rather than showing solidarity with Spain, EU governments used the event to justify further attacks on Schengen and score political points, domestically and in Brussels, by playing into the far right's agenda.
37% : More externalisation - including through return hubs - both worsens the EU's dependence on third-country governments by giving them greater leverage and exposes people to more violence and danger.

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