AFTER CEUTA: WHAT FUTURE FOR MAGHREB-EUROPE RELATIONS?
The MED This Week newsletter provides informed insights on the most significant developments in the MENA region, bringing together unique opinions and reliable foresight into future scenarios. Today, we shed light on the recent events in Ceuta and their impact on Maghreb-Europe relations.
Five years after the 2021 migration crisis, the land border between Spain and Morocco is back in the spotlight. As the local population struggles to return to normal amid an exceptional military presence, figures concerning the 2026 mass border crossing in Ceuta are striking: around 70,000 people attempted to enter; more than 80 lost their lives; and thousands remain in the exclave. The event shook the Spanish government led by Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez, who called it “a violation of Spain’s territorial integrity”. However, although the executive refrained from pointing the finger at Rabat, many across the Spanish political spectrum – including Ceuta’s leader Juan Jesús Vivas and, more subtly, Defence Minister Margarita Robles – have voiced their concern that Morocco might be implicated in the outbreak. The suggestion comes in light of the exceptional magnitude of people involved, the lack of any restraint by the Moroccan border police and the conjunction of potentially controversial diplomatic positionings. Just the previous week, PM Sánchez’s first visit to Algiers in four years marked an effort to mend ties with Algeria after Madrid’s 2022 endorsement of Morocco’s plan for Western Sahara. In an effort to balance the relations with its two neighbours, Spain might have just prompted Rabat to send a strong message, using border control to highlight its political leverage. Such allegations are not unprecedented. In 2021, 8,000 people entered through the Spanish-Moroccan land border following news that Polisario Front leader Brahim Ghali had been hospitalised in Spain, an episode later labelled by Spanish intelligence as deliberate. This time, subsequent political pressure on the Spanish government from both inside and outside of Europe – notably, the United States – suggests that, if intentional, such a measure has yet again proven effective. Beyond the impact of the crisis on Spanish domestic politics, the event sheds light on the complexities of Euro-Maghrebi relations, and their interplay with managing migration flows. Or, best, with the capacity – be it merely potential or not – of “gateway” countries to use mass transborder unrestricted access towards the EU to exert political pressure. That is also highlighted by the ever-declining number of sea and land arrivals and border incidents since 2021, after Spain recognised Moroccan sovereignty over Western Sahara (2022), and a bilateral agreement on migration was signed (2023). Although the 4 August EU emergency meeting publicly reaffirmed solidarity and cohesiveness within the Union, the Ceuta events and the following friction between Spain and other EU members over its migration and immigration policies also underline the significant political leverage of the neighbours framed by the EU as “third countries”. As the EU Pact on Migration and Asylum came into force on 12 June 2026 and a new comprehensive EU-Morocco partnership is being negotiated, the Ceuta events appear both as a stress test for Europe’s internal cohesion and a turning point for relations between the two shores of the Mediterranean.
Experts from the ISPI network discuss the implications of the Ceuta crisis for Europe, the Maghreb and their future relations.
