The Italian government maintains its decision to keep extraordinary controls at ports and airports for passengers coming from Spain at least until mid-August, despite repeated calls from Spanish authorities to reconsider this measure. Rome justifies its stance citing security reasons linked to the massive arrival of migrants in Ceuta on July 30 and 31 and the fear that a new mass entry attempt into the autonomous city could occur around August 15.
Italy’s Foreign Minister, Antonio Tajani, insisted this Monday on linking the migratory situation in Ceuta with possible security risks in Italy and other European countries. He stated that currently neither “the risk of terrorism” nor that of irregular immigration can be ruled out. “We cannot underestimate the risks, which is why until August 15 Italy will not be able to change its decision to suspend Schengen. Afterwards, when everything returns to normal, we are ready to resume the previous situation,” said the Foreign Minister in an interview on public radio.
Antonio Tajani also assured, as the rest of the Italian government has been doing for days, despite Spanish authorities not having expressed it that way, that in Madrid they “consider the risk of a new migratory wave before August 15.” For this reason, Giorgia Meloni’s government intends to maintain the controls until then. “Not revoking this measure is a precaution we are taking. We hope to be able to remove the controls soon, as soon as the risk ceases,” Tajani explained. He accused the Spanish president, Pedro Sánchez, of exaggerating the situation. “It is Sánchez who has dramatized,” he said. “Spain’s reaction is incomprehensible and completely unacceptable,” he insisted in another interview with the newspaper La Stampa, regarding the analogous controls established by Spain for passengers coming from Italy.
Furthermore, the Italian Foreign Minister again attacked Spanish migration policy, an argument Meloni’s government used to lash out at Sánchez initially, but which later faded from the Italian discourse. Now Tajani returns to the charge. “Spain has not monitored as it should have. And the policy of ‘come all and you will be regularized,’ as it has done with a million immigrants, is a negative message that puts everyone’s security at risk,” the minister stated.
The Italian decision to maintain the controls, which have been in force since August 1, is based on a report that the Intelligence services have delivered to the government and which, according to Il Corriere della Sera and other national media, warns of a concrete risk related to jihadist terrorism in the area. The Italian press states that this report was prepared based on information shared by the Spanish CNI. The Intelligence report mentions the possibility of the entry of between 30,000 and 50,000 migrants into Ceuta between August 10 and 15.
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The document in question, according to the media, recalls that Ceuta and nearby Moroccan localities have in the past been the scene of investigations and operations against transborder jihadist networks. In particular, it notes that several dozen people from those areas traveled in previous years to Syria and Iraq to join extremist organizations. Although currently the international situation is not the same as a few years ago.
The Italian secret services are also monitoring mobilizations being forged on social networks and instant messaging applications, given the possibility of a new collective entry attempt into Ceuta. According to the report cited by Il Corriere della Sera, the campaign shows a certain degree of coordination. On TikTok, Facebook, and WhatsApp, it has been detected that several users are managing different groups in which they share links across platforms and use numbers from Morocco, the United States, Egypt, Tunisia, Libya, or Senegal. Another element that worries Italian authorities is the presence of human traffickers in some of these groups, who could take advantage of the concentration of potential migrants to organize irregular entries into European territory.
As a result of the extraordinary controls applied to passengers coming from Spain, Italian authorities have so far detected about twenty non-EU citizens, originally from Morocco, China, Colombia, and Georgia, with some type of irregularity in their documentation or judicial incidents. Fifteen of them were rejected at the border for not meeting entry requirements, while another four have been placed at the police’s disposal after appearing in databases with criminal records or pending judicial proceedings. None of them had previously transited through Ceuta.
