EU calls for stronger borders after Ceuta migrant crossings

EU chief criticises Spain’s migrant plan after Ceuta crisis meeting

Migration commissioner says scheme regularising undocumented people ‘not a good signal’ for Europe Explainer: Why is Ceuta a migration flashpoint? Brunner said the past few days had been “a test of our resilience” and the EU’s external border. The situation, he said, was under control; no one had moved to mainland Spain and the EU’s border-free Schengen zone had not been affected. Twenty two signed a letter, organised by Italy and Denmark, that implicitly criticised Madrid’s plan to regularise 500,000 undocumented migrants and asylum seekers as a “pull factor” for “illegal migration”. France was one of the few member states not to sign the letter of 22 EU leaders indicating readiness to reintroduce border checks, although it did step up its own controls. The EU’s foreign policy service was investigating the possible role played by Russian disinformation, but it was too early to reach conclusions, Brunner said. Migration has been a deeply divisive issue for the EU since the 2015-16 crisis, when more than a million people sought asylum in the union. The EU’s border agency, Frontex, reported 178,000 irregular border crossings in 2025, down 26% on the previous year and the lowest since 2021, when much of Europe was in Covid lockdown. The 2015-16 crisis paved the way for a sweeping overhaul of the EU’s asylum and migration rules , which came into force in June. The Greek prime minister, Kyriákos Mitsotákis, in an article for Politico , said countries should be able to suspend asylum applications for newly arrived people when facing “exceptional situations of extreme and disproportionate pressure”.