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Spain has hit back at Italy in an escalating immigration row by announcing that it would “reinstate border controls” on travellers arriving from its Mediterranean neighbour in the wake of the Ceuta migrant crisis.
In a sign of deepening EU divisions, Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez’s government said late on Friday that it would start to check the identities and documents of travellers arriving from Italy at Spanish ports and airports from midnight — less than three hours after its announcement.
The decision widens a rift between Sánchez, a pro-immigration leftwinger, and Italy’s rightwing prime minister Giorgia Meloni, who imposed similar border controls on travellers from Spain after last week’s migrant influx in Ceuta, one of Spain’s north African exclaves.
Ceuta, a tiny territory of 83,000 people, was overwhelmed by an estimated 72,000 migrants who swam and scaled border fences from Morocco to stream on to its streets on July 30, an episode that sparked alarm across the EU about the territory’s borders being breached.
Most of the migrants, who included sub-Saharan Africans, were shepherded back to Morocco within 48 hours. But a few thousand remain in Ceuta, including 1,300 children, according to Spain’s youth minister. Spain and Morocco have blamed the episode on social media misinformation and human traffickers.
Madrid’s move at the height of the summer holiday season creates another barrier inside the EU’s Schengen free-travel zone, a key part of the bloc’s foundations that is supposed to allow passport-free travel between its member countries.
Spain did not mention Ceuta in its announcement but, taking a swipe at Meloni’s government, it said it was introducing border controls due to “the persistent irregular migratory pressure affecting” Italy.
Spain insists that no migrant who arrived in Ceuta last week has got into the Schengen area because additional passport controls for travel to mainland Spain are permanently in place.
But Meloni, who has prioritised curbing unauthorised immigration, was quick to threaten to “suspend” Spain from the Schengen zone. On August 1 Italy introduced random checks on travellers arriving from Spain in order to verify the documents of non-EU travellers.
“This is an extraordinary measure, adopted to protect national security and prevent possible repercussions for our nation,” Meloni said.
The move incensed Spain, which called it “unjust”, “based on spurious arguments” and “unprecedented in recent history”.
The Sánchez government had earlier on Friday urged Italy to end its border controls, suggesting they were driven by “domestic electoral considerations” and threatened “proportionate” countermeasures if they were not removed by Sunday.
Meloni’s office, which is watching a far-right former general eat into her coalition’s support base, responded by saying “Italy does not accept ultimatums or impositions from abroad regarding national security and border control”.
It said it would not reconsider its controls and alluded to unsubstantiated social media rumours, which it wrongly attributed to the Spanish government, of a possible new attempt by migrants to rush Ceuta on August 15.
A few hours later Spain announced its imposition of near-identical border controls, due to remain in place until September 7. Madrid said they would be carried out on a random basis and involve “checking travellers’ identity card or passport and nationality and, in the case of third-country nationals, their visa or residence permit”.
The Italian government made no immediate comment on Spain’s announcement.
Madrid has previously suggested that its record of curbing unauthorised immigration is better than Rome’s.
This year the number of unauthorised migrants arriving by boat in Italy has sharply declined. In the first seven months of this year 17,000 arrived by sea, down from 37,000 in the same period last year, according to Italy’s interior ministry.
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