Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez faced criticism from 22 European leaders, including German Chancellor Friedrich Merz, Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, and Romanian President Nicuşor Dan, regarding his migration policies. They accused him of undermining EU border security amid the crisis in Ceuta.
Sánchez, increasingly isolated, countered that his EU partners reacted in a “selfish” and “illegal” manner to the sudden influx of around 50,000 unauthorized migrants arriving from Morocco to the Spanish exclave of Ceuta in North Africa, according to reports from News.ro citing the European edition of POLITICO.
Although nearly all these migrants have since returned to Morocco and none reached mainland EU territory, the leaders expressed serious concern about the threat to EU borders. They highlighted that Sánchez’s decision to grant legal status to up to 1.2 million unauthorized migrants is a “pull factor” contributing to the crisis.
In a letter addressed to European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, European Council President António Costa, and Irish Prime Minister Micheál Martin (whose country currently holds the rotating presidency of the EU), the 22 leaders directly referenced the need for EU cooperation on policies such as the regularization program for migrants in Madrid.
They wrote, “We have a duty to effectively deter and relentlessly combat illegal migration by coordinating our actions, strengthening our external borders, and addressing all policies that may serve as pull factors, such as the regularization of a very large number of irregular migrants.”
