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Spain says there was no threat to the European Union's visa-free travel zone last week when in just 24 hours, tens of thousands of people entered Spanish territory in North Africa known as Seut. Now, after an emergency meeting on Tuesday, the EU's 27 home affairs ministers declared their support for how Spain handled the border crisis. According to the Spanish government, at least 72,000 migrants entered Seyota from Morocco. 70,000 of those migrants have already returned. Madrid also said none of them have traveled to mainland Spain.
Well, joining me now is Carla Hobbes. She heads the Madrid office of the European Council on Foreign Relations and she argues that the crisis in SA has exposed several dangers and vulnerabilities for the European Union. Miss Hobs, it's good to have you with us. I know that you argue that Morocco may have used migration as leverage against Spain in what we saw last week. what evidence um tells us that this was deliberate? Thank you very much for having me. Um I think you know the Spanish government hasn't publicly blamed Morocco, you know, and it's pointed to the recent Supreme Court ruling in Spain on returns. And it is true that there was a
disinformation campaign built on that ruling. So, you know, social media uh in Morocco uh was flooded throughout July with videos telling people kind of how to get to the um you know, tips on tips on how to go and lots of disinformation surrounding the fact that they would be well welcomed into Spain. Um so that's definitely was a part of it but I think the if you look at the rest you know the sheer scale of the numbers you know of those that went through you know the reduced border controls um that we saw you know migrants own accounts that their authorities encouraged them to cross uh it all points towards a degree of Moroccan complicity and I think also you know one can't ignore the timing you know just 10
days earlier Prime Minister Sanchez had traveled to Alers to relaunch relations with Morocco's regional rival. Um it also fits quite a long established pattern that we've seen um of Morocco using migration as a coercive tool against Spain to uh extract concessions from Madrid. you know, so you know, in 20 in 2021 when there was a diplomatic rift over the Western Sahara, we saw Rabbat allow, you know, 9,000 migrants into the um so there's definitely a significant precedent and I think it's hard to deny that Morocco had some involvement in this. Well, certainly Spain cannot argue that this had never happened before, but Spain is saying that it had no intelligence warning. And a lot of
people are going to ask, how can tens of thousands of people move towards one border in just a matter of hours without authorities at least sensing that something is in the works? Yeah. I think um on that front it's it's it's going to be hard to establish the uh the facts. You know, Spain has um an interest in not escalating things with Morocco. Um so you know I it's not going to publicly uh point you know do a blame game that this fits a pattern of Spain kind of when these things happen just saying that it's cooperating with Morocco. This is because you know Spain depends on in the very immediate term on Morocco cooperating on returns but then in the in the medium and long term on
migration and security cooperation. So, I think, you know, getting into the weeds of exactly what happened in the run-up to the event is going to be quite difficult and establishing exactly what happened may be quite challenging. Let me ask you um about what we're seeing here inside the European Union. Um you know, there were several days right after the migrant incident in Seo where you had countries that were blaming Spain for what had happened. Today we heard interior ministers from the European Union praising Spain's response. Is that a genuine change of position or are these politicians just engaging in political damage control?
Yes. I mean um so this the kind of display of solidarity today I think yes comes a little bit too late as it were. I mean it is necessary but it really comes after a pretty remarkable week. I mean, as you were saying, we saw, you know, a public diplomatic spat breaking out, you know, between Spain and Morocco and between Spain and Italy as a between Spain and Morocco, you know, uh, and instead of showing solidarity, you know, particularly as a southern Europe, which has also experienced mass irregular migration and received European solidarity as a response, Italy blamed it on Spain's migration policy and, you know, proceeded to suspend and Shenhen um you know and then seeing other countries kind of join the bandwagon. You know Denmark who it should be remembered
was on the receiving end of a great deal of European solidarity um when it came when to um President Trump making moves on Greenland. Um so you know these were the two countries Italy and Denmark that actually got 20 others to sign up to a letter blaming Sanchez's immigration policy. Uh I think you know it was pretty remarkable actually to see EU member states turn on another in such a shocking display of disunityity. So you know it's good that they're talking solidarity today. But I think the lack of solidarity that was shown at the time you know won't be forgotten in Spain nor by countries that are kind of seeking to burst the EU the way Morocco did. You know, critics also blame
Spain's decision to regularize more than a million migrants already living there, even without proof of a pull effect. Did Madrid create the perception that Spain's door was open to anybody? No. You know, I think we have to separate this out. you know, you don't get tens of thousands of people at one crossing in a single day because of a regular regularization that was announced, you know, back in January. You know, you get it when border controls on the other side are stood down. um you know so I think you know this kind of conflation of regularization with weaponization of migration is a complete fallacy you know and also on the regularization
policy itself you know it isn't a kind of radical invention of the Sanchez government you know um Spain has had various regularization um streams you know in the last kind of 20 years and actually various of them were administered by conservative governments um and it didn't have the same effect and you know we're also seeing several of the countries which are criticizing Spain on this regularization Italy included have actually themselves done um regularization campaigns albeit perhaps slightly more discreetly so I think you know it really cannot be um yeah it cannot be uh joined together yeah Carla Hobs unfortunately we're out of time but we appreciate your insights tonight thank you very much.
