Following the crisis in Ceuta, Meloni writes to Brussels: “An urgent meeting is needed to coordinate a response”

“A coordinated response is needed” in the face of a situation that is causing “deep concern”. For this reason, “we are determined to prevent human traffickers from undermining the integrity of our external borders”. Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni has sent a letter to Brussels: an initiative promoted jointly with the Danish government and endorsed by 22 countries, through which Rome is asking the Irish Presidency of the Council of the European Union to urgently convene an extraordinary video conference of interior ministers to jointly assess the situation and define a European response. 

Yesterday, the Prime Minister suspended the Schengen Agreement with Spain for one month.

“We recognise that the recent ruling by the Spanish Supreme Court has been exploited to trigger this attack and abuse our migration and asylum system,” the letter states.  “At the same time, we have a duty to effectively deter and resolutely combat irregular migration, by coordinating our actions, strengthening our external borders and addressing all policies that may act as pull factors, such as the regularisation of a very large number of irregular migrants.” It continues: “We cannot allow uncontrolled mass crossings, the exploitation of migration or other hybrid threats to fuel the perception that it is possible to enter the European Union illegally and that irregular entry can subsequently be transformed into legal residence.”  For all these reasons, “The current situation calls for unity, determination and swift action.”


This morning, Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez also wrote to the European institutions expressing “serious concern” over the “reaction” of some European countries to the news coming out of Ceuta in recent hours. The government in Madrid, for its part, is calling for a meeting of EU interior ministers.