Italy says it’s temporarily suspending EU Schengen arrangement with Spain after 60,000 migrants reach Ceuta

And, on that note, we will be closing the blog for today.

At least 57 people have died trying to reach the Spanish enclave of Ceuta after as many as 60,000 migrants entered the tiny territory from Morocco (17:33).

Spain’s prime minister, Pedro Sánchez, called it a “a violation of Spain’s territorial integrity” (12:51) and blamed on misleading narratives spread by human traffickers (12:54, 13:17).

In response, Italy has moved to suspend its free-travel Schengen arrangements with Spain by sea and air (18:26), claiming it was necessary to safeguard the security of its citizens (19:02, 19:07). It is understood it will amount to “targeted, selective checks” on third-country nationals arriving from Spain (19:19).

But by Friday afternoon, the Spanish authorities claimed that a vast majority of the migrants have voluntarily returned to Morocco (16:41, 18:20), with hundreds more going back by the hour as there was no onwards migration route to mainland Spain or the EU (14:02, 15:04).

The huge influx, which took place over the course of just 24 hours, overwhelmed the city of 85,000 people, triggered a political crisis for Madrid and led to a barrage of criticism from the US (15:25, 15:29, 18:02) and other EU countries, including broader calls to suspend Spain’s membership of the Schengen area (9:42, 10:21, 12:10, 13:52, 14:52, 16:59, 17:38).

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