European Union leaders should have received several messages during the recent surge of migrants into the Spanish exclave of Ceuta. In particular, cohesion without trust is fragile; dependence without limits leads to vulnerability; and selective enforcement of international law risks eroding a pillar of Europe’s strategic identity.
MADRID—At the end of July, tens of thousands of migrants crossed from Morocco into Ceuta, a Spanish exclave in North Africa. While most of them soon returned to Morocco voluntarily, several thousand, many of them minors, remain stranded in the city, leaving Spain to grapple with the humanitarian, security, and administrative consequences. Nonetheless, the immediate chaos has subsided, creating an opening for Europe to reflect on the vulnerabilities the episode revealed.
The first vulnerability relates to cohesion. Ceuta is not merely a Spanish city on the North African coast; it is European Union territory and part of the EU’s external frontier. But Europe’s initial response to the crisis was not to defend a common border. Instead, Italy imposed temporary border controls with Spain, with the support of other member states, including Denmark, Finland, and the Netherlands. The Czech Republic went so far as to call for the temporary suspension of Spain’s Schengen membership.
While 22 EU countries called for emergency talks to devise a “coordinated European response,” any impression of solidarity was undermined by finger-pointing. By the time EU interior ministers expressed solidarity with Spain and affirmed that Europe’s external borders are a shared responsibility, a worrying message about European cohesion had already been sent.
The tensions may seem to be about migration, but they are really about trust. Free movement within the EU is possible only if member states believe that external borders are effectively protected. The Ceuta crisis showed just how tenuous that belief is: border controls and recriminations started almost immediately, even though the migrants who entered Ceuta did not leave the exclave.
Spain bears responsibility for EU members’ lack of trust in its border management. In an assessment issued before the crisis, the EU highlighted shortcomings in Spain’s contingency planning for a mass influx, including insufficient coordination with European instruments and neighboring countries. Moreover, it took almost a month for Spain’s government to bring the Ceuta issue before its National Security Council, betraying a lack of understanding of the strategic nature of the challenge.
Nonetheless, if Europe’s common borders are to be operational, its members must forge a common understanding of what defending them entails. Without robust mutual trust, cohesion will always be fragile.
The second vulnerability the Ceuta crisis revealed lies in the EU’s dependence on others. For years, the bloc’s migration strategy required cooperation with neighboring countries, which Europe effectively pays to prevent departures, disrupt smuggling networks, accept returns, and contain flows before they reach EU territory.
Outsourcing border management might seem like an ideal solution, but it raises strategic risks. The more Europe depends on neighboring states to control migration, the more leverage its partners have. Morocco, central to Europe’s migration-control network and an important interlocutor on trade, investment, counterterrorism, security, and energy, is well aware of this.
There is no evidence showing categorically that Morocco’s government orchestrated the crossing into Ceuta, which was probably driven largely by widespread misunderstanding of a Spanish Supreme Court ruling on migrant returns, promoted by human-trafficking networks and on social media. But while Moroccan authorities deny deliberately relaxing border controls, Moroccan security forces took a passive approach to the surge.
Make no mistake: Moroccan security forces have shown that they are more than capable of preventing such crossings. After the surge, when rumors circulated that another attempt would be made, Moroccan forces, in cooperation with Spain, thwarted it, drawing praise from the European Commission but also making clear that Morocco can prevent security risks at Europe’s border from escalating—or not.
Purchasing cooperation does not make a strategic partnership. Europe needs Morocco, and Morocco benefits enormously from its relationship with Europe. But strategic relationships are tested when interests diverge, not when they coincide. Genuine partnership must include not only cooperation on common interests, but also clear constraints on behavior.
Morocco claims Ceuta and Melilla (another Spanish enclave), and increasingly frames that claim in the language of decolonization. The history is complex and should be treated as such. The Strait of Gibraltar has been a zone of exchange, conflict, migration, and overlapping political authority for millennia. But Morocco’s territorial claims have no legal grounds.
The forms of sovereignty that existed in the pre-modern Maghreb are different from the contemporary nation-state. When Portugal occupied Ceuta in 1415, it was claiming the territory from the Marinid Sultanate, which covered much of the Maghreb at the time. Portugal transferred sovereignty to Spain, which already controlled Melilla, in 1668. Spain has exercised sovereignty over both territories ever since.
Unlike Gibraltar and Western Sahara, Ceuta is not on the United Nations’ list of Non-Self-Governing Territories. Sovereignty over Ceuta is not disputed under international law: it belongs to Spain, making the enclave part of EU territory. A claim made by another state does not, in itself, do anything to change these facts. Such a claim is not linked to a process of decolonization and certainly does not create the right to alter Ceuta’s status through demographic, economic, or political pressure.
This brings us to the third vulnerability: the risk of erosion of international law. From Ukraine to Greenland, the EU has often responded to attacks on, or threats against, territorial sovereignty by invoking international law. Selective enforcement, however, weakens the frameworks that underpin such principles.
For Europe, international law is not just a matter of foreign policy; it is part of a strategic identity. Lacking the military might of the United States or China, the last thing the EU wants is to live in a world where borders can be changed by force or coercion. Spain—and the EU more broadly—must therefore make clear that its territorial sovereignty is non-negotiable. Europe must continue to build a resilient strategic partnership with Morocco, while rejecting the idea that historical complexity translates into contemporary entitlement.
About the Author:
Ana Palacio is a former minister of foreign affairs of Spain and former senior vice president and general counsel of the World Bank Group, is a visiting lecturer at Georgetown University.